I know how to do it the hard way, but is there a simple, magic way to validate an email address in PHP?

TIA...

May start with
http://www.webreference.com/js/column5/

After some more digging, I answered my own question with:

function validate_email($email)
        {
       $exp = "^[a-z\'0-9]+([._-][a-z\'0-9]+)*@([a-z0-9]+([._-][a-z0-9]+))+$";
       if(eregi($exp,$email))
        {
        if(checkdnsrr(array_pop(explode("@",$email)),"MX") )
            {
                return true;
            }
        else
            {
                return false;
            }

        }
        else
            {
                return false;
            }
        }