I am using PHP 7.4 as well as PHP 8.2 and I have a regex that I use in PHP to match words (names). To be completely honest: I barely recognize this regex monster I created. Thus this question asking for assistance in figuring it out. It is basically this:
$is_word = preg_match('/^(?![aeiou]{3,})(?:\D(?![^aeiou]{4,}[aeiou]*)(?![aeiou]{4,})){3,}$/i', $name);
I’ve been using it for about 6+ years to match names in a script I have created: It will basically return a boolean of TRUE or FALSE of it matches a word pattern.
But today it messed up on matching two names:
- Li
- Drantch
To test this out, you can run use the following batch of test names; using pseudo names for example sake:
- Nartinez
- Drantch
- Dratch
- Xtmnprwq
- Yelendez
- Boldberg
- Yelenovich
- Allash
- Mohamed
- Li
I attempted to adjust the regex to set the second {x,x} to {5,}
$is_word = preg_match('/^(?![aeiou]{3,})(?:\D(?![^aeiou]{5,}[aeiou]*)(?![aeiou]{4,})){3,}$/i', $name);
It helps in cases like that to match names like like “Drantch” but then it still completely misses two letter names like “Li.”
How can this regex be tweaked to properly match all names? If not all names, how can it be adjusted to properly match “Drantch” and other obvious names other that “Li.”
Note that, “Xtmnprwq” is a fake test name so I can test negatives as well as positives.
