[PopSmith]

I was looking over my previous response and realized that I didn't make any sense, compared to what I really meant to ask about.

I am actually looking for clarification on the preg_match function as I used here:

//Validate the first name
return preg_match("/^
[a-zA-Z]
[a-zA-Z._]{1,15}$/ix", $c_fname ); 

I am thinking that my above use of preg_match would validate that the $c_fname variable, which is the sanitized output of the variable $first_name, contains only characters a-z in either upper or lower case as well as the period or underscore. The {1,15} would limit the preg_match to between 1 and 15 characters.

However, I could (and probably am) wrong in my thinking.