php only allow letters, numbers, spaces and specific symbols using pregmatch

Question

on my php i use preg_match to validate input texts.

if(preg_match(\'/^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$/\', $firstname)) {
}

But this only allows alp

Answer 1

Use

preg_match('/^[a-z0-9 .\-]+$/i', $firstname)