I found a regex on http://regexlib.com/REDetails.aspx?regexp_id=73
It's for matching a telephone number with international code like so:
^(\(?\+?[0-9]*\)?)?[0-9_\- \(\)]*$
When using with PHP's preg_match, the expression fails? Why is that?
views:
55answers:
2
+2
A:
Because preg_match expects the regex to be delimited, usually with slashes (but, as correctly noted below, other characters are possible as long as they are matched):
preg_match('/^(\(?\+?[0-9]*\)?)?[0-9_ ()-]*$/', $subject)
Apart from that, the original regex was copied wrong - several characters were unescaped. The original on regexlib has a few warts, too (some characters were escaped needlessly).
Tim Pietzcker
2010-07-08 06:13:40
The regex can be delimited with things other than slashes. You just have to make sure you match 'em and escape them if they appear in the regex. Unfortunately, I can't find the reference in the manual.
George Marian
2010-07-08 06:23:59
yeah I copied it from there, but the backslashes didn't make it, thanks. What characters where escaped needlessly??
FFish
2010-07-08 06:35:23
The parentheses and the dash inside the character class - if you put the dash at the start or the end of the class, it doesn't have to be escaped; the parentheses don't have to be escaped at all.
Tim Pietzcker
2010-07-08 09:42:12
+3
A:
You need to surround it with / delimiters:
preg_match('/^(\(?\+?[0-9]*\)?)?[0-9_\- \(\)]*$/', $phoneNumber)
And make sure you don't leave out the backslashes (\).
too much php
2010-07-08 06:17:28
Actually you can use any delimiter, you only need to match the starting delimiter with the ending one. I use things like '@', or '!' as delimiters all the time.
quantumSoup
2010-07-08 06:19:15