Using PHP to Extract Multiple Phone numbers from a string or file

Question

I have a huge text file that is a copy and paste job from a PDF phone bill. I need to extract each phone number and put it in an array so that I can insert the numbers into a DB table and run some queries on it.

I am using preg_match_all to try and match all of the numbers and failing miserably. Here is the code I have:

$phone_list = "13:26 (415)332-5555 13:49 (925)398-5555 13:56 (415)294-3333 14:17 (707)538-2222 14:23 (415)233-1111 14:28 (415)294-0000 14:34";
preg_match_all('/^\(?(\d{3})\)?[- ]?(\d{3})[- ]?(\d{4})$/',$phone_list,$matches);

...Which returns nothing. If I shorten the $phone_list to:

$phone_list = "(415)294-0000";

...I get a result. What am I missing?

Thanks for your help!

Tim Pietzcker · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-03 15:40:34Z

3

Remove the anchors ^ and $ - they force the regex to match the entire string.

^ means "Assert that the match starts at the start of the string".

$ means "Assert that the match ends at the end of the string".

answered Mar 3, 2011 at 15:40

Tim Pietzcker

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1 Comment

Claydough Over a year ago

Thanks Tim...this was exactly what I need. Sometimes RegEx feels like Sanskrit to me. :)

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