Posted by "Richard Lynch" on 10/22/05 05:58

Given:

It is unacceptable to reject perfectly valid email addresses, no
matter how arcane. [Like mine. :-)]

The CORRECT RegEx for validating an email is 3 pages long, and
performance in PHP would probably not be so good...

In today's Security-conscious world, data validation is a requirement.

The (relatively) recent changes in domain names that allow UTF
(Unicode?) characters.

Checking MX records is not reliable at all.

Forcing users to respond to email is A) burdensome to real users in
many cases, and B) no real barrier to halfway intelligent fake users.

.... would it not make sense for there to be a BUILT-IN PHP function of
a TRUE email syntactic validation?

So at least one KNOWS that the email is a valid construct, before you
even try (if you try at all) to make sure that a person actually
checks it at least once in their life.

Currently, email syntax validation is being done in very limited
fashion, if not outright "wrong" by rejecting what actually ARE valid
email addresses in about 10,000,000 PHP scripts by users who don't
have any realistic options to truly "do it right" because who can
really live with that 3-page Regex in their PHP code?

Yes, in the past, I may have come down squarely on the opposite side
of this topic, but I've changed my mind.

I believe PHP needs a built-in syntactically CORRECT email validation
function, vetted and tested by professionals, instead of the mess we
now have.

PLEASE do not point me to any existing email validation code unless
you believe it is not only 100% correct and complete with RFC
definitions of syntactically valid email. Not interested. I've
already seen them, and been burned by them.

--
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