You need to understand that numbers have no meaning to a regex. Regexes only understand characters. So the numeral value of the digits isn't understood.
The following will match the sample you provided, as well as single digits. But would fail on an alphanumeric string like "abc123". Plus you'll get empty match before numbers that don't fit the pattern.
Raw Match Pattern:
\b(?=\d)0?1?2?3?4?5?6?7?8?9?\b
$matches Array:
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => 1234
[1] => 56789
[2] => 3456
)
)
Michael
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Albert Einstein