Regex problem - missing matches

Question

Hello,

Here's a short regex example:

preg_match_all('~(\s+|/)(\d{2})?\s*–\s*(\d{2})?$~u', 'i love regex  00– /   03–08', $matches);
print_r($matches);

The regex only matches '03–08', but my intention was matching '00–' as well. What is the problem? Anyone could explain?

Answer 1

The portion at the end:

-\s*(\d{2})?$~u

Means that you can only have spaces and/or optionally two digits between your match and the end of the string. This means 00- can't match since there's other stuff between it and the end of the string.

If you remove the $, it should work as you intend.