Deprecated: Function ereg() is deprecated [duplicate]

Answer 1

You must use preg_match instead of ereg because the last one is deprecated.

Replacing it is not a big deal:

ereg( "[][{}()*+?.\\^$|]", $_REQUEST['name'] )

will become:

preg_match( "/[][{}()*+?.\\^$|]/", $_REQUEST['name'] )

p.s. I had to modify more than one hundred files while I was porting my old project to PHP 5.3 to avoid manually modifying I've used following script to do it for me:

function replaceEregWithPregMatch($path) {
    $content = file_get_contents($path);
    $content = preg_replace('/ereg\(("|\')(.+)(\"|\'),/',
                            "preg_match('/$2/',",
                            $content);
    file_put_contents($path, $content);
}

I hope it helps.

Answer 2

The function ereg() is deprecated and should not be used any more. The documentation tells you what to do (to use preg_match instead).

Answer 3

Like you said - no bigie, it works like a charm:

if ( empty($_REQUEST['name']) ) {
    $pass = 1;
    $alert .= $emptyname;
} elseif ( preg_match( "/[][{}()*+?.\\^$|]/", $_REQUEST['name'] ) ) {  
    $pass = 1;
    $alert .= $alertname;
}
if ( empty($_REQUEST['email']) ) {
    $pass = 1;
    $alert .= $emptyemail;
} elseif ( !preg_match("#^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$#i", $_REQUEST['email']) ) {
    $pass = 1;
    $alert .= $alertemail;
}
if ( empty($_REQUEST['message']) ) {
    $pass = 1;
    $alert .= $emptymessage;
} elseif ( preg_match( "/[][{}()*+?\\^$|]/", $_REQUEST['message'] ) ) {
    $pass = 1;
    $alert .= $alertmessage;
}

Thank you guys