Are there any difference between regular expressions in javascript and PHP?

Question

This is the regex to validate email address in javascript,I\'m not sure if I can just use it directly in PHP:

/^((([a-z]|\\d|[!#\\$%&\'\\*\\+\\-\\/=\\?\\^_`{         


        

Answer 1

I used RegexBuddy to convert your regex from JavaScript to PHP.

This is the result:

/^((([a-z]|\d|[!#$%&\'*+\-\/=?\^_`{|}~]|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])+(\.([a-z]|\d|[!#$%&\'*+\-\/=?\^_`{|}~]|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])+)*)|((\x22)((((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(([\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x7f]|\x21|[\x23-\x5b]|[\x5d-\x7e]|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])|(\\\\([\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0d-\x7f]|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}]))))*(((\x20|\x09)*(\x0d\x0a))?(\x20|\x09)+)?(\x22)))@((([a-z]|\d|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])|(([a-z]|\d|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])*([a-z]|\d|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])))\.)+(([a-z]|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])|(([a-z]|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])([a-z]|\d|-|\.|_|~|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])*([a-z]|[\x{00A0}-\x{D7FF}\x{F900}-\x{FDCF}\x{FDF0}-\x{FFEF}])))\.?$/iu

I'm very interested whether it works :)

However, as for really using this, I urge you to consider reading this article (by the author of RegexBuddy), especially the section "Trade-Offs in Validating Email Addresses", explaining why a simpler regex probably makes more sense - in the end, you can never know if a mail address is valid before you have successfully sent mail to it (and received a confirmation).