title: Regex for English and Irish Phone Numbers
body: <p>I've been looking around the web at various <code>regex</code> for phone number validation. There is of course hundreds of different examples as there are hundreds of different formats of phone number out there...</p>
  
  <p>I decided I would write my own for two reasons. </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>I wanted to learn more about regular expressions</li>
  <li>The ones I came across didn't suit my needs</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>However, I've a few issues I'm wondering some of you might help me clear up in order to make my regular expression better.</p>
  
  <p>The format of the numbers I'm looking for are as follows:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Must start with either +353 or +44</li>
  <li>Followed by numbers 0 - 9</li>
  <li>ability to include whitespaces between the numbers </li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Currently I have this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>([+][353]{3})[\d\s]{7,11}|([+][44]{2})[\d\s]{7,11}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This enables me to enter in numbers in such formats like:</p>
  
  <p>+353xxxxxxx or +44xxxxxxx</p>
  
  <p>The problem I'm having is that it's counting the whitespace in the <code>{7,11}</code> and as a result If someone enters:</p>
  
  <p>+353 xxx xxx xxx It will not validate</p>
  
  <p>I'm trying to find out a way that I can allow spaces between any of my numbers 0 - 9 but to limit the numbers at 11.</p>
  
  <p>So potentially somebody could come along and enter in this number:</p>
  
  <p>+353 12 34 56 78 </p>
  
  <p>Any help is much appreciated. </p>