Hi Monks, I am writing a script to take data from a web page and validate it. Most of the script is done, including the length validation. The only bit i am stuck on as i do not understand perl all that well is the validation of symbols. The field $username must have either characters i.e 'bob' or characters and digits i.e 'bob1' but not just digits i.e '1234565'. It cannot have any symbols either, only _- are to be accepted i.e for usernames 'bob-jones' or 'tom_frank'. The current piece of code i have below does not do exactly what i want it to do, but if somebody could modify it, so that i can plonk it back into my script i would be eternaly gratefull.

 if ($display !~ /^\w*$/) {
    $message = $message.$errmsg ;
    $found_err = 1 ; }
[download]

Thank-you for reading this, and i know for most of you this is simple - but i'm rubbish at this type of thing.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.