Question

I am using preg_match to extract the various sections of a US-based phone number from within a paragraph of text. I can already extract the number. But I want to make match[0] include only the phone numbers.

Problem: My pattern comes close, but I need some help to get rid of whatever text is before the phone number. How do I get rid of the preceding string "Hey my phone is "?

PHP Code

$pattern = '/.*?(?:1(?:[. -])?)?(?:\((?=\d{3}\)))?([2-9]\d{2})'
    .'(?:(?<=\(\d{3})\))? ?(?:(?<=\d{3})[.-])?([2-9]\d{2})'
    .'[. -]?(\d{4})(?: (?i:ext)\.? ?(\d{1,5}))?.*?/';;

$subject = 'Hey my phone is 911-628-4539, call me tonight at 9:16:00pm, my room is 122-1001';

preg_match($pattern, $subject, $match);

print_r($match);

Output

Array ( [0] => Hey my phone is 911-628-4539 [1] => 911 [2] => 628 [3] => 4539 ) 

Answer 1

Just remove : .*?

from your regex. If you don’t need it why match it?