Question

I am new to programming PHP and am trying to validate a field in a form.

The field if for a RAL color code and so would look something like : RAL 1001.
so the letters RAL and then 4 numbers.

Can someone help me set them into a regular expression to validate them.
i have tried this with no success:

$string_exp = "/^[RAL][0-9 .-]+$/i";

What can I say but sorry for being a complete NOOB at PHP.

Cheers
Ben

Answer 1

[RAL] will match just one character, either R, A or L, whereas you want to match the string “RAL”. So you probably want something like this,

$string_exp = "/^RAL[0-9]{4}$/";

This will match "RAL1001", but not "RAL1","RAL 1001", "RAL12345", etc. If you wanted the space between RAL and the number, then also put that space into the regexp.