preg_match limit string size without changing the string

Question

I'm trying to validate a password input of a user using php. Now I'm trying to require the user to put at least 6 chars. it doesn't matter if it's all letters or digits or any other language chars. In fact I want it to accept special chars from different languages... so I decided not to change the string expressing but limit the length of it I used this code

public function validpassword($value,$fields = NULL ,$reports = NULL){
global $reports;
if(preg_match($value, "/{6,24}/")){
return $value;
}else{
$reports[] = $fields.": 6-24 chars limit";
return false;
}
}

it doesn't really work. can you help me with that please. i've been looking over the web i can't seem to find something.

Answer 1

You can try:

preg_match("/^.{6,24}$/u", $value);

^ and $ are anchors for start and end of the string.

the u modifier is used to read the string as an unicode string.

Answer 2

Try this

preg_match($value, "/^.{6,24}$/u");

You can also use strlen

Example:

if((strlen($value) < 6) || (strlen($value) > 24))
{
    echo 'Min. length is 6 characters and max. length is 24 characters';
}