Yet Another Email Validation question

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

I need to verify that a variable has a valid email address format or set a default, otherwise sendmail rejects the email. So I'm using a rudimentary regex to validate the variable. I'm just not sure if it's a reasonable test.
Here's what I'm doing:

$from_addr = 'me@here.com' unless ($from_addr =~ /^\w.*?@.*?\..*$/);
[download]

Does this make sense?

TIA

20040408 Edit by BazB: Changed title from 'Yet Another RE for email address'

Comment on Yet Another Email Validation question Download Code

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Re: Yet Another Email Validation question by gryphon (Abbot) on Apr 06, 2004 at 15:48 UTC
Greetings sweetblood, Check out Email::Valid. I'm a big fan of letting someone else do my work for me, and the module looks fast. `use Email::Valid; my $valid_email = (Email::Valid->address($unverified_email)) ? $unverified_email : undef;` [download] gryphon code('Perl') \|\| die; 20040408 Edit by BazB: Changed title from 'Re: yare for email address'	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Yet Another Email Validation question by sweetblood (Prior) on Apr 06, 2004 at 15:57 UTC
Yes, this looks good. My only problem is I won't be able to get it installed for quite awhile as the company has to do a review prior to installing any modules. This is a lengthy process. This is why I'm opting for a regex method. Thanks!	[reply]
Re: Yet Another Email Validation question by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 06, 2004 at 19:34 UTC
The company has to review any newly installed module? Sensible. But what about your code, doesn't that have to be reviewed? What if you just make Email::Valid part of your application? Or just copy and paste the relevant code? How long did your company take to review perl itself? Anyway, your regex is just too trivial to take serious. It would fail on every email address I create for registrating at a website. Rejecting email addresses that don't start with a \w character is as useful as rejecting street names that don't start with a vowel. You're rejecting perfectly valid email addresses, and on the other hand, you are accepting anything that starts with a \w character, and contains a @ and a dot. Which would mean you'd accept the text of this posting as a valid address, yet reject "this is valid"@example.com. Abigail	[reply]
Re: Yet Another Email Validation question by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Apr 06, 2004 at 16:02 UTC
You might try stealing the code from Email::Valid, if you can't install it. Otherwise, you just need to consider what constitutes a "valid" email address format for the purposes of your application. At the very least, I think you want to change the dots in your regex to \S. The PerlMonk `tr///` Advocate	[reply]
Re: Re: Yet Another Email Validation question by sweetblood (Prior) on Apr 06, 2004 at 16:09 UTC
Excellent suggestion! Thanks!	[reply]
Re: Yet Another Email Validation question by waswas-fng (Curate) on Apr 06, 2004 at 16:11 UTC
You could always look at the source for Email::Valid and incorperate it directly into your app. Just for reference the regex used in that module is a wee bit more complex than yours: Read more... (10 kB) -Waswas	[reply] [d/l]
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