Question

I am needing help with a credit card validation script. I have figured out how to determine if a credit card is valid/invalid but what I am needing is this:

If someone enters an invalid credit card number, is there a way to determine which number is invalid?

Here is my current code to determine if a card is valid/invalid:

function validateCreditcard_number($credit_card_number) {
    //Get the first digit
    $firstnumber = substr($credit_card_number, 0, 1);
    //Make sure it is the correct amount of digits. Account for dashes being present.
    switch ($firstnumber) {
        case 3:
            if (!preg_match('/^3\d{3}[ \-]?\d{6}[ \-]?\d{5}$/', $credit_card_number)) {
               return '<li>This is not a valid American Express card number. Please use a different credit/debit card or re-enter your credit/debit card details.</li>';
            }
            break;
        case 4:
            if (!preg_match('/^4\d{3}[ \-]?\d{4}[ \-]?\d{4}[ \-]?\d{4}$/', $credit_card_number)) {
                return '<li>This is not a valid Visa card number. Please use a different credit/debit card or re-enter your credit/debit card details.</li>';
            }
            break;
        case 5:
            if (!preg_match('/^5\d{3}[ \-]?\d{4}[ \-]?\d{4}[ \-]?\d{4}$/', $credit_card_number)) {
                 return '<li>This is not a valid MasterCard card number. Please use a different credit/debit card or re-enter your credit/debit card details.</li>';
            }
            break;
        case 6:
            if (!preg_match('/^6011[ \-]?\d{4}[ \-]?\d{4}[ \-]?\d{4}$/', $credit_card_number)) {
                return '<li>This is not a valid Discover card number. Please use a different credit/debit card or re-enter your credit/debit card details.</li>';
            }
            break;
        default:
            return '<li>This is not a valid credit card number. Please use a different credit/debit card or re-enter your credit/debit card details.</li>';
    } //END Switch statement

    //Luhn Algorithm
    $credit_card_number = str_replace('.', '', $credit_card_number);
    $credit_card_number = str_replace('-', '', $credit_card_number);
    $credit_card_number = str_replace(' ', '', $credit_card_number);
    $map = array(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
                0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9);
    $sum = 0;
    $last = strlen($credit_card_number) - 1;

    for ($i = 0; $i <= $last; $i++) {
        $sum += $map[$credit_card_number[$last - $i] + ($i & 1) * 10];
    }

    if ($sum % 10 != 0) {
       return '<li>This is not a valid credit card number. Please use a different credit/debit card or re-enter your credit/debit card details.</li>';
    } else {
       //If we made it this far the credit card number is in a valid format
       return 'This is a valid credit card number' ;
    }

} //END validateCreditcard_number

Answer 1

The Luhn checksum can’t detect which digit is incorrect, it can only detect single-digit errors and some multi-digit errors. It’s entirely possible to mistype two digits and get a number with a valid checksum.