in reply to SOLVED Regular Expression help

What do you think of: /^[[:alpha:]][[:alnum:]]{2,7}$/;

The first character must be alfabetic, followed by 2 to 7 alfanumeric characters. It uses POSIX character classes ([:alpha:] for alfabetic; [:alnum:] for alfanumeric) within the [   ] class tags.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom