I have this code snippet that is part of an e-mail validation:
[php]$email_pattern =
‘/^[^@s]+@([-a-z0-9]+.)+[a-z] {2,}$/i’;[/php]
I don’t understand the purpose of some of the symbols in the second line. Where is the best place to go to get a break down on what it does?
I understand part of it, but the first bracket, the carets, and the curly braces section are confusing to me.
I hate regrex! 
is there a difference between regular expressions and other types?
Regular expressions is pattern matching/manipulating and there are 2 types - PCRE - perl compatable (http://www.php.net/pcre) and POSIX (http://www.php.net/regex). I have been told to stick with PCRE but… shrug.
Oh and the pattern you put up is PCRE. I’ll take a shot at translating your code… I will probably be wrong so be prepared to look it up.
Edited to show indention
Regular expressions is pattern matching/manipulating and there are 2 types - PCRE - perl compatable (http://www.php.net/pcre) and POSIX (http://www.php.net/regex). I have been told to stick with PCRE but… shrug.
Oh and the pattern you put up is PCRE. I’ll take a shot at translating your code… I will probably be wrong so be prepared to look it up.