Using a Regular Expression in PHP to validate a name

Question

Here i want to validate a name where:

A name only consist of these characters [a-zA-Z-'\s] however a sequence of two or more of the hyphens or apostrophe can not exist also a name should start with a letter.

I tried

$name = preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z'\s-]{1,20}$/", $name);

however it allows double hyphens and apostrophes. If you can help thank you

looks like this has been answered. stackoverflow.com/questions/6798745/… — shobeurself
– shobeurself, Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 22:58
@shobeurself not quite the same as it doesn't have the condition on sequences of ' and - — Nick
– Nick, Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 23:00
Does this answer your question? Regular expression for validating names and surnames? — AMC
– AMC, Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 23:00
@AlexanderCécile doesn't sound like OP is validation people's names. For one - the 20 character limit does not fit with those. It seems like it's usernames or displaynames for the system. So, the dupe doesn't seem to match. — VLAZ
– VLAZ, Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 23:03
Another idea to require a word character left to any - or single quote. This pattern won't allow a hyphen surrounded by space: /^(?:[a-z]|\b[\'-]|\h){1,20}$/i. — bobble bubble
– bobble bubble, Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 11:21

Nick · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-20 22:59:43Z

3

You can invalidate names containing a sequence of two or more of the characters hyphen and apostrophe by using a negative lookahead:

(?!.*['-]{2})

For example

$names = array('Mike Cannon-Brookes', "Bill O'Hara-Jones", "Jane O'-Reilly", "Mary Smythe-'Fawkes");
foreach ($names as $name) {
    $name_valid = preg_match("/^(?!.*['-]{2})[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z'\s-]{1,20}$/", $name);
    echo "$name is " . (($name_valid) ? "valid" : "not valid") . "\n";
}

Output:

Mike Cannon-Brookes is valid
Bill O'Hara-Jones is valid
Jane O'-Reilly is not valid
Mary Smythe-'Fawkes is not valid

Demo on 3v4l.org

answered Nov 20, 2019 at 22:59

Nick

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