Description:
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I sent the following email to Mehdi Achour <didou@keliglia.com>

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Hi,

 

I discovered (the hard way after hours of code troubleshooting) that ereg/eregi/etc. functions have a very useful but LIMITED length function.

It seems that while the ereg functions will search for matches in (any?) length code, the length limiter {0, 255} is limited to 255.

 

I was trying to match lengths of 350 and 800? but couldn?t figure out why I was getting an error.  There?s no documentation on this anywhere that I could find.

 

Please add it to all applicable regular expression match items that it applies to.

 

Thanks!

-- CJ Greiner

info@SmithfieldEntertainment.com

http://www.SmithfieldEntertainment.com

757-356-1166

 

 


Reproduce code:
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if (eregi("^([a-z0-9 $&*?\'.-]{100,300})$", $register_data[register_summary], $ereg_results) == FALSE) {
  $error_message .= '<br>Subject Summary:  Please use only letters, numbers, and punctuation: \'-$&amp;*?<br>';
}

Expected result:
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if the user input $register_data[register_summary] does not match the regular expression OR is ouside the acceptable length range of 100-300 letters, then the expression should return FALSE and assign an $error_message.

Actual result:
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Even when the user input for $register_data[register_summary] had acceptable characters AND had acceptable lengths...

The code failed because the max length of 300 {100, 300} was causing a FALSE or FAIL.

I experimented with the length until I brought it down to 255... then it worked.

This limit is not documented anywhere.
There should be no limit... or at least a much higher limit, since the matching expression will work on a much longer string if no length limit is placed in it.

Thanks!