Notromda has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've been using perl for a while, and hanging around the monastery for a while, but I can't seem to find (or ask the right question to the search engines) a set of simple routines to check data for validity, such as what one would read in from a web page.

I'm sure there are a lot of regex's that could do the job, and I've written a few myself, but is there any collection somewhere?

For example, it might be nice to do: 

print "good" if isEmail($email);
print "good" if isCurrency($price);
print "good" if isDate($date);
print "good" if isPhoneNumber($phone);
print "good" if isPrintable($input);

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and so on. Some functions are easy, some are more involved. Would this pass taint checking? Is there something like this already out there?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Simple Data Cleaning and Verification
by DamnDirtyApe (Curate) on Nov 07, 2002 at 22:49 UTC

    Take a look at Regexp::Common; it has some similar functionality. As far as dates go, take a look at the documentation for Date::Manip; it shows you an easy way to validate a date.


    _______________
    DamnDirtyApe 
    Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who
would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity.
            --Friedrich Nietzsche
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Re: Simple Data Cleaning and Verification
by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Nov 07, 2002 at 23:16 UTC

    The basic way of clearing a variable's taint flag is to apply the m// operator to the variable. The regex you use for the match determines the quality of your untainting.

    To wrap the match in a sub, you should use the aliased arguments rather than a copy, so that the taint flag is cleared for the external variable. For example, using the unicode printable test:

    sub isPrintable {
    $_[0] =~ m/^\p(IsPrint)+$/;
}

    [download]

    The Regexp::Common module may be useful to you as a library. Email addresses are notoriously difficult.

    After Compline,
    Zaxo

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[d/l]
Re: Simple Data Cleaning and Verification
by waswas-fng (Curate) on Nov 07, 2002 at 22:51 UTC
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Re: Simple Data Cleaning and Verification
by perrin (Chancellor) on Nov 07, 2002 at 22:50 UTC
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Re: Simple Data Cleaning and Verification
by adrianh (Chancellor) on Nov 08, 2002 at 11:48 UTC
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