Ereg headache

I have a real problem that I can't seem to figure out. I need an ereg pattern to search for a certain string (below). All this is being shelled to a Unix grep command because I'm looking this up in very many files. I've made myself a <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" tag> that contains in the value attribute a list of comma-delimited numbers. I need to find if a certain number is in these tags (and each file contains one tag). I need an ereg statement that will let me search these lines to see if a number exists, obviously in the beginning or the end or the middle or if it's the only number in the list. Here's what I mean (searching for number 1): <INPUT TYPE = "HIDDEN" NAME = "numbers" VALUE = "1,2,3,4,5"> //beginning <INPUT TYPE = "HIDDEN" NAME = "numbers" VALUE = "0,1,2,3,4,5"> //middle <INPUT TYPE = "HIDDEN" NAME = "numbers" VALUE = "5,4,3,2,1"> //end <INPUT TYPE = "HIDDEN" NAME = "numbers" VALUE = "1"> //only This is frustrating me, because each solution I come up with doesn't work. Here is my grep/ereg statement so far: $commanumberbeginning = "[[0-9]+,]*"; //this allows 0 or more numbers before it, and if there are any, they must have 1 or more digits followed by a comma $commanumberend = "[,[0-9]+]*"; // this allows 0 or more numbers after it, and if there are any, they must have a comma followed by 1 or more digits $ereg-statement=$commanumberbeginning . $numbertosearchfor . $commanumberbeginning; //$numbertosearchfor will be obtained through a select control in a form grep '<INPUT TYPE = "HIDDEN" NAME = "numbers" VALUE = "$ereg-statement">' *.html This problem is kicking my butt. Any help? __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site http://webhosting.yahoo.com