As another idea, I don't see the need to do this all in one regex. You have an explicit list of forbidden names, I would make an array(or hash) of those names and put that in a prominent place - not embedded in a tricky regex later in the code. Below I used a hash look-up for an exact match, but the forbidden table could also a list of patterns if it was necessary to get that complicated.

There is nothing wrong with having a number of little regexes as you continue to valid the user's input. With code written like this, reading the user error messages gives a clear picture of what is and what is not allowed without having to use brain cells thinking about the regex albiet as simple as they are below.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @forbidden = qw ( master model dbccdb sybsecurity sybsystemdb sybsystemprocs tempdb DBA ); my %forbidden = map{lc $_ => 1}@forbidden; # or could just build the hash manually while ( (print "Enter DB name: "), (my $name = <STDIN>) !~ /^\s*q(uit)?\s*$/i ) { $name =~ s/^\s+//; $name =~ s/\s+$//; #also does chomp next if ($name =~ /^\s*$/); #simple re-prompt if blank line if ($name =~ / /) { print "Error no spaces within name allowed!\n"; next; } if ( $forbidden{lc $name} ) { print "Error: $name is a reserved name!\n"; next; } if ( $name =~ /\W/) # only a-zA-Z0-9_ allowed { print "Error: illegal character in name!\n"; next; } #... perhaps more tests on the input name? print "Ok, $name is valid\n"; }

In reply to Re: exact word match by Marshall
in thread exact word match by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.