Checking Your Work: Validating Input – The Cool Stuff

"You will find this type of comparison especially helpful when it comes to verifying numbers and validating character strings that should not have any numbers, such as names, for example. Below are scripts that apply to our form example in our first article where we check to make sure the name input is all characters and our number of years is a whole number. I have also included another common script that is outside the scope of our example which you will find useful for checking input to make sure it is formatted properly.

"The first thing we will need to do is to create some common variables to hold our expressions that we will use to validate against. Don’t worry if the expressions don’t make any sense to you. Creating regular expressions is an art form all its own. Whenever possible you should try to find an expression that someone else has already created and tested. Writing one from scratch can be both time consuming and tedious, especially for the novice."

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