Posted by Jim Moseby on 09/21/05 21:52

(Forwarding private reply to the list)
-----Original Message-----
From: Al Rider
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 2:19 PM
To: Jim Moseby
Subject: Re: [PHP] Re: email validation (no regex)


> What you have is virtually impossible to determine if all legitimate
possibilities are covered.
> email validation using regex is a very heavily analyzed subject
> Google "regex email validate" and you'll find loads of expressions.
Look at the Zend article, it provides some insight.

I fully understand about the almost limitless possibilities. Googling the
subject returns results more mind boggling than the regex itself. :o) Do
ANY of the regex examples you have found cover all those possibilities? If
so, why are there so many different approaches? For most applications,
where you will only be validating a small number of emails in a given day,
why put yourself to all the regex pain, still to not have covered all the
possibilities?

In the end, with regards to email validation, all most people need is to
know that a given email has a proper username, just 1 '@' in the middle, and
a valid domain. If it doesn't, its a bogus email address.

JM

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