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[Anonymous Monk]

Hi Monks, I am writing a script to take data from a web page and validate it. Most of the script is done, including the length validation. The only bit i am stuck on as i do not understand perl all that well is the validation of symbols. The field $username must have either characters i.e 'bob' or characters and digits i.e 'bob1' but not just digits i.e '1234565'. It cannot have any symbols either, only _- are to be accepted i.e for usernames 'bob-jones' or 'tom_frank'. The current piece of code i have below does not do exactly what i want it to do, but if somebody could modify it, so that i can plonk it back into my script i would be eternaly gratefull.

 if ($display !~ /^\w*$/) {
    $message = $message.$errmsg ;
    $found_err = 1 ; }

Thank-you for reading this, and i know for most of you this is simple - but i'm rubbish at this type of thing.