Module development and code questions

Hi,

What's the best way to verify that an email address "looks" sensible? I'm writing a module that asks for an email address on a form and I'd like the form validation procedure to check that the email address looks like a decent email address. I've considered writing a lumpy bit of code that first checks for the presence of an "@", then explodes the email address around the "@", then checks to make sure the explode resulted in two fragments, then checks for the existance of a "." in the second fragment. Is there an easier and less fragile way?

Thanks,
Jack

How can I write a module that inserts a hook into the node.module? I want to set a meta header containing keywords for the nodes. They keywords are saved in a table cell.

How do I treat German umlaute (ISO-8859-1) like ä, ö, ü in drupal modules? When I do drupal_set_title("Übersicht"), the U umlaut breaks.

I want to make my own drupal module. I use the template from the tutorial as a base. Let's say the module prints the nodes that belong to a taxonomy term.

When I call it via ?q=new_module

everything works fine and it displays all taxonomy terms.

If I call it via ?q=new_module/term/2

everyone may access the module. Why is that?

(I know there IS a module that does what I try to do, it's only for training purposes.)

I've installed Drupal 4.6.5 (no problems), a few stand-alone modules (no problem) and installed CivicRM (a pain, but a smooth installation). Upon adding the latest volunteer.module (4.6.0) available, I continue to get errors as it makes calls to contact_manager.module. My understanding is that particular module is being phased out and replaced by CivicRM?

Is there a patch or an updated download for volunteer that I've missed?

I am still not quite getting a few things in drupal development. Here is a piece of code I am writing:

while ($points = db_fetch_object($result)) {
$rows[] = array(t($points->name),
t($points->tot_points),
t($points->tot_games),
t($points->avg_points),
l(t('details'), "poker/details_page", array())
);
}