On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 08:56:12AM +0900, Timothy Hunter wrote: > /\A[[:alpha:]][-_.[:alpha:]]{3,28}[[:alpha:]]\z/ > > >basically I want allow the same pattern allowed for emails but before > >the @ char :) > > > > > The above regexp does not do this. Certainly you can have numbers in > your email address, for example. Basically anything is allowed before > the @. Google "regular expression email address" for extensive > discussions about this. And if you are being pedantic, RFC2822 doesn't allow E-mail addresses to contain two dots next to each other, unless the local-part is quoted.