regex (PCRE)

[darkke]

OK, I'm beginning to think that my fundamentals on PCRE are flawed (bear with me).

If I pass a string to preg_match() with an if statement like so:

 
<?
if( preg_match("/[a-z]{1,3}/i","tumultuous" ) )        {

    echo("yep.");     
} 
else        {
        echo("nope.");
}
?>

I would think that the statement would be false and echo "nope" because the string contains more than 3 "a-z" characters (hence the {1,3}). I tried submatching, but couldn't get this to work.

I also tried sending it a string like "aaaa" to see if maybe it would fail at matching more than three instances of ONE a-z character.

Anyone?

[xblue]

your pattern just matches a sequence of 1-3 letters anywhere in the string.

take a look at the assertion signs that tie the pattern to specific position in the string such as beginning or end.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/pcre.pattern.syntax.php
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Regular_Expressions