I'm writing a script that strips properly formatted numbers out of text.  For some reason it does not seem to be working right.  I'm trying to find all 15 digit numbers in the file and have constructed the following expression: 

 /\b([0-9]{15})\b/

The string is being used as follows in php5:

preg_match_all( '/\b([0-9]{15})\b/', $file_contents, $match);
$number_array=$match[1];

Here is a short segment of the file that I'm passing to the script.

random text with 398639164013360 numbers inserted in the  >398639164013377 middle to see whether 398639164013384 this stupid script works 398639164013391 

What am I doing wrong???  Thanks!

PHP Code Example:
<?php
$sourcestring="your source string";
preg_match_all('/\b([0-9]{15})\b/',$sourcestring,$match);
echo "<pre>".print_r($match,true);
?>

$matches Array:
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 398639164013360
            [1] => 398639164013377
            [2] => 398639164013384
            [3] => 398639164013391
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => 398639164013360
            [1] => 398639164013377
            [2] => 398639164013384
            [3] => 398639164013391
        )

)

\b is problematic to use, since [a-zA-Z_] are in \w as well as [0-9] so if you have numbers like this:

A398639164013360 or 398639164013360A they will not be found, not sure if that's an issue for you.  If that is an issue an alternate pattern to use:

PHP Code Example:
<?php
$sourcestring="your source string";
preg_match_all('/(?<=^|\D)[0-9]{15}(?=\D|$)/',$sourcestring,$match);
echo "<pre>".print_r($match,true);
?>
 

Note that the capture group 1 is not necessary as you can reference $match[0] to access the same data, I eliminated capture group 1 from the last pattern.

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Excellent advice!  Thanks.  This forum is quickly becoming one of my favorites... 

One follow-up question.  Why does the following regex statement match to those numbers as well. 

/\b(\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d?)\b/

It returns the following, when I would expect it to not find any matches at all:

$matches Array: (     [0] => Array         (             [0] => 164013360             [1] => 164013377             [2] => 164013384             [3] => 164013391         )

Thanks!

Show the source string you are testing with.

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