help with regular expression

[noobiept]

Hi, so I have this regular expression that is looking for a number.
The text has an hour, and I want to extract the number.

Its in the form: xxx hours (where x is the number).

What I have:

var pattern = /.*([0-9]{1,3})\W*h/i;

var matches = pattern.exec (text);

I want a number that can have from 1 to 3 digits, the problem is that 'matches' only gets a string with the number with one digit (the last digit), even if text has a number with more digits.

If I change the part within the parentheses for {2}, it works well for 2 digits, etc.

Is there a way to get the most digits, instead of just the least that conform with the pattern?

So that if the text is "20 hours" I get "20".

If its "3 hours" I get "3".

(hope you understand what I mean )

[mrhoo]

var text='Total of 20 hours';
var pattern = /\d+(?= *hours)/i;

var hours= pattern.exec (text);
alert(hours)

[noobiept]

I tried that, but has two problems.

First the number is not limited to three digits (although I guess I can deal with that later).
If I have more than 1 space after the number, it gives null... but you do have the * there..

[Declan1991]

var s = "Total of 2 hours";
var r = /\d{1,3}(?=\s*hours)/;
s.match(r);

I'd go for something along those lines personally.