Identify phone number in a string

Question

i am using the following code to detect if a string is a phone number...

<?php
$text = "example467676@gmail.com" ;
if (preg_match_all('/\+?[0-9][0-9()-\s+]{4,20}[0-9]/',$text)){
    echo "phone number";    
}else{
    echo "not a phone number";
}
?>

the problem is that i get phone number where as i should be getting not a phone number... how can i solve this problem... any help would be appreciated.

You want to check if someone has used a phone number in their email address? That's not gonna work too well. — The Blue Dog, Dec 13 '13 at 18:39
Take a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3357675/validating-us-phone-number-with-php-regex — DrCord, Dec 13 '13 at 18:44
Instead of looking for something that looks like a phone number, wouldn't it be easier to check for something that doesn't look like an email address? — andrewsi, Dec 13 '13 at 18:53

elixenide · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-13T19:03:46.523

2

The problem is that {4,20} will match any string in which the preceding block appears 4 to 20 times, so it matches the digits in the sample email address. Try this:

<?php
$text = "example467676@gmail.com" ;
if (preg_match_all('/^\+?([0-9-]|\s|\([0-9]+\)){4,20}[0-9]/',$text)){
    echo "phone number";    
}else{
    echo "not a phone number";
}
?>

Regular expression visualization

Debuggex Demo

Note that preg_match_all requires 3 parameters in PHP < 5.4.

edited Dec 13 '13 at 19:03

answered Dec 13 '13 at 18:49

elixenide

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your code works fine but the problem is i get not a phone number when i put in this +8801689347804 – asdf Dec 13 '13 at 18:59
1

That's because I didn't know you wanted to match `+` signs. I've updated it to match an optional `+` at the beginning. – elixenide Dec 13 '13 at 19:03

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 13 '13 at 19:51

preg_match_all() starts from the first match until the last one.

In this case the first match would be 4, and it continues till 6. Ignoring all the other characters.

To make it start from the beginning use ^ (beginning of line anchor) before the regular expression. And to force it to continue until the end put $ (end of line anchor) at the end of the regular expression.

Like this:

<?php
$text = "example467676@gmail.com" ;
if (preg_match_all('/^+?[0-9][0-9()-\s+]{4,20}[0-9]/$', $text)) {
  echo "phone number";  
} else{
  echo "not a phone number";
}
?>

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 13 '13 at 18:44

If I understand your problem correctly, the regular expression you've got in your example is returning a match even when someone puts in an email address with numbers, like you have there.

Match to the beginning and end of the line only to avoid this, using ^ and $:

<?php
$text = "example467676@gmail.com" ;
if (preg_match_all('^/\+?[0-9][0-9()-\s+]{4,20}[0-9]$/',$text)){
    echo "phone number";    
}else{
    echo "not a phone number";
}
?>

Working example: http://regex101.com/r/xY0yU3

Identify phone number in a string

3 Answers3