Validating Input for new person to vb

hello,
im very new to vb and am making a little program where a user enters a url, i need to be able to validate it, much like a perl regular expression.. does something like this exist in vb? all it needs to do is make sure they have http://(optional www)a hostname and a 3 letter tld. with no file or folder following that.

if someone could show me some code or point me to a tutorial id appreciate it.

You can add the Microsoft Scripting Runtime to your vb6 project and use the VBScript RegEx object to do RegEx-type validations.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/e...vsobjRegExp.asp

hi, thanks for the article, but I guess I dont have a build in object called regexp or somethign..

the code i put in is:

Function RegExpTest(patrn, strng)
Dim regEx, Match, Matches ' Create variable.
Set regEx = New RegExp ' Create a regular expression.
regEx.Pattern = patrn ' Set pattern.
regEx.IgnoreCase = True ' Set case insensitivity.
regEx.Global = True ' Set global applicability.
Set Matches = regEx.Execute(strng) ' Execute search.
For Each Match In Matches ' Iterate Matches collection.
RetStr = RetStr & "Match found at position "
RetStr = RetStr & Match.FirstIndex & ". Match Value is '"
RetStr = RetStr & Match.Value & "'." & vbCrLf
Next
RegExpTest = RetStr
End Function

and when i try to compile it highlights New RegExp on line 3 of the function and says user-defined type is not defined... i guess this means I dont have the regexp objects in my vb version?? im running vb6 enterprise edition and created an enterprise project... any more help or code is appreciated.

i come from c, php, and java so vb still is looking strange and confusing in my second week of it.
thanks

You have to add a reference in your project to the Microsoft Scripting Runtime. The RegEx object is an object of VB Script, not VB itself.

ok,, how do i do that?

If you have VB6, click Project - References and add the scripting runtime.

OK! It's a good idea!
Thank U to Doug G.

Here is an example that I came up with that partially works but fails sometimes..

RegExpTest("^http://+.[a-z0-9.]+.[a-z0-9\-.]+(ad|ae|aero|af|ag|ai|al|am|an|ao|aq|ar|arpa|as|at|au|aw|az|ba|bb|bd|be|bf|bg|bh|bi|biz|bj|bm|bn|bo| br|bs|bt|bv|bw|by|bz|ca|cc|cd|cf|cg|ch|ci|ck|cl|cm|cn|co|com|coop|cr|cs|cu|cv|cx|cy|cz|de|dj|dk|dm|d o|dz|ec|edu|ee|eg|eh|er|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fk|fm|fo|fr|ga|gb|gd|ge|gf|gh|gi|gl|gm|gn|gov|gp|gq|gr|gs|gt| gu|gw|gy|hk|hm|hn|hr|ht|hu|id|ie|il|in|info|int|io|iq|ir|is|it|jm|jo|jp|ke|kg|kh|ki|km|kn|kp|kr|kw|k y|kz|la|lb|lc|li|lk|lr|ls|lt|lu|lv|ly|ma|mc|md|mg|mh|mil|mk|ml|mm|mn|mo|mp|mq|mr|ms|mt|mu|museum|mv| mw|mx|my|mz|na|name|nc|ne|net|nf|ng|ni|nl|no|np|nr|nt|nu|nz|om|org|pa|pe|pf|pg|ph|pk|pl|pm|pn|pr|pro |ps|pt|pw|py|qa|re|ro|ru|rw|sa|sb|sc|sd|se|sg|sh|si|sj|sk|sl|sm|sn|so|sr|st|su|sv|sy|sz|tc|td|tf|tg| th|tj|tk|tm|tn|to|tp|tr|tt|tv|tw|tz|ua|ug|uk|um|us|uy|uz|va|vc|ve|vg|vi|vn|vu|wf|ws|ye|yt|yu|za|zm|z w)$",txtUrl.Text)

sometiems will work but i have a feeling the problem is with the string concatenation in their. im used to perl regular expressions and vb's are a little different, if someone could fix that id appreciate it...

Hi drew010!
I try your program!It can work!.
but I don't know this statement in the pattern:
^http://+.[a-z0-9.]+.[a-z0-9\-. ]

What's the meaning? To pattern the URL?