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.