preg_match regular expression to match 2 characters and 2 to 10 digits

Question

I need to do a regular expression that will return true if the first two characters in a string are 2 alphabets and the rest are digits only, length of 2 - 10.

I'm lost trying. I just cannot figure how to do this.

This is what the previous guy left me with:

function clearTerm($term) {
    if( preg_match('/^[a-z0-9()\- ]+$/i', $term) ) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

Here's what I was trying, but it's hopeless. I cannot figure how to check the first two and then the rest.

function clearTerm($term) {
    if( preg_match('/^([a-z0-9]+$/i{2})', $term) ) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}

The regex needs to return true if: The first 2 characters are 2 alphabets in lower case (lg) The remaining are digits, 2 to 10 digits in length.

So, lg01234 -> True, lgx1 -> False

Tried and failed, so asked here.

Answer 1

function clearTerm($term) {
    if( preg_match('/^[a-z]{2}[0-9]{2,10}$/', $term) ) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
}


NODE                       EXPLANATION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ^                        the beginning of the string
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  [a-z]{2}                 any character of: 'a' to 'z' (2 times)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  [0-9]{2,10}              any character of: '0' to '9' (between 2 and 10 times
                           (matching the most amount possible))
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  $                        before an optional \n, and the end of the string