So no other ideas, then?
Some contextual code if there's still confusion:
PHP Code:
// find out banned aliases and make them unroutable
debugecho("Caching banned aliases...");
$bannedaliases = explode(" ", $vboptions['vbms_bannedaliases']);
foreach ($bannedaliases as $key => $value)
{
$bannedaliasesp[$key] = addslashes(strtolower($value));
}
$bannedaliases = implode("%\", \"%", $bannedaliases);
$bannedaliases = "\"" . $bannedaliases . "\"";
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// cache users
/**
* @todo remove username from query (only used for debugging)
*/
debugecho("Caching users...");
$result = $DB_site->query("SELECT userid, username, vbms_alias, email,
IF(options & " . $_USEROPTIONS['emailonpm'] . ", 1, 0) AS emailonpm
FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user
WHERE vbms_alias != \"\" AND LCASE(vbms_alias) NOT IN ($bannedaliases)");