ctype_alpha

(PHP 4 >= 4.0.4, PHP 5)

ctype_alpha — Check for alphabetic character(s)

Description

bool ctype_alpha ( string $text )

Checks if all of the characters in the provided string, text, are alphabetic. In the standard C locale letters are just [A-Za-z] and ctype_alpha() is equivalent to (ctype_upper($text) || ctype_lower($text)) if $text is just a single character, but other languages have letters that are considered neither upper nor lower case.

Parameters

text: The tested string.

Return Values

Returns TRUE if every character in text is a letter from the current locale, FALSE otherwise.

Examples

Example #1 A ctype_alpha() example (using the default locale)


<?php
$strings = array('KjgWZC', 'arf12');
foreach ($strings as $testcase) {
    if (ctype_alpha($testcase)) {
        echo "The string $testcase consists of all letters.\n";
    } else {
        echo "The string $testcase does not consist of all letters.\n";
    }
}
?>

The above example will output:

The string KjgWZC consists of all letters.
The string arf12 does not consist of all letters.

Notes

Note:
If an integer between -128 and 255 inclusive is provided, it is interpreted as the ASCII value of a single character (negative values have 256 added in order to allow characters in the Extended ASCII range). Any other integer is interpreted as a string containing the decimal digits of the integer.


worth noticing? It seems that the ctype_alpha family of functions won't handle UTF-8 string (php 5.2.6)





<?php





$texte = 'jérôme';


setLocale(LC_CTYPE, 'FR_fr');


echo 'Pure ascii ? ', (ctype_alpha($texte) ) ? 'yes' : 'no';


echo '<br />';


$texte = iconv( "UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", $texte) ;


echo  'Letters only ? ' , (ctype_alpha($texte) ) ? 'yes' : 'no';





?>





ouputs :





Pure ascii ? no


Letters only ? yes

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