Jerimee

Your code totally worked for me. I appreciate you posting the code. Hope you figured out what was going wrong.

$thepdcode = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'pdcode', true);
                  if ($thepdcode){
                  	?><div style="padding-bottom:20px;"><?php
                  	$pattern = '/[a-zA-Z]/';
                  	//preg_match($pattern, $meta)
                    if (preg_match($pattern, $thepdcode)){
                    	print "<!-- pd wp shortcode -->";
                    	echo do_shortcode($thepdcode);
                    } else {
                      //pdcode: incorrect syntax
                    }
                    ?></div><?php
                  } else {
                  	//pdcode: missing
                  }