I am trying to match phone numbers in the following patterns:
9 99 99 99 99
0999999999
11 0999999999
9 9999 9999
But not the following:
9 99 99 99 99 (two spaces)
9 99\n99 99 99
Therefore, I want to match 7 to 12 digits and an optional spaces between them, but not sequences of more than one white space.
So far I came up with "[\d ?]{7,12}", but it doesn't really match the requirements as the spaces are counted in the {7,12} and it also matches two sequences of spaces.
[\d ?]{7,12} is a pattern that matches 7 to 12 digit, space or ? chars. It can match a ??????? string because ? is not a quantifier, but a mere question mark symbol when declared inside a character class.
If you change it to (?:\d ?){7,12}, you may partially solve the problem, the space at the end. I suggest using
\b\d(?: ?\d){6,11}\b
See the regex demo
The word boundaries \b will make sure you only match whole words.
Details
\b - leading word boundary\d - a digit(?: ?\d){6,11} - 6 to 11 consecutive sequences of
? - an optional space\d - a single digit\b - trailing word boundary.you can use
\d(\s?\d){6,11}
the first \d matches on the first digit. Next can follow a group of 6 to 11 (to make a total of 7 to 12) pairs of an optional space, followed by a digit. Multiple spaces are not allowed, as you see each optional space has digits to both sides. It can be checked here That regexp is equivalent, but shorter, to this one:
\d\s?\d\s?\d\s?\d\s?\d\s?\d((((((\s?\d)?\s?\d)?\s?\d)?\s?\d)?\s?\d)?\s?\d)?
that can be checked here.
See that the \s matches a newline, so you can get multiline number (as shown in the examples) If you don't like that behaviour, then narrow the space class using a simple space, as in
\d( ?\d){6,11}
that can be tested here Look, that now, a more than 12 digits number is truncated to only the first twelve, if this is not desired, use word boundary at the end, as in
\d( ?\d){6,11}\b
See it here.
I'd try
(?:\d+ ?){7,12}
The original regex was matching a character group of a space OR a digit seven to twelve times. The supplied regex matches a digit followed by a possible space seven to twelve times. That way the spaces aren't counted as part of the total.