Strange string validation problem with Flash/PHP

programming
1

I’m outputting a “+” delimied string from flash (loadVars) to PHP

[COLOR=RoyalBlue]1+3+5+13+45[/COLOR]

I’m using regex to test if the string is valid. Using regexlib.com tester.

**[COLOR=RoyalBlue]Regex pattern: ^[0-9+]+$

1 (Match)
[/COLOR][COLOR=RoyalBlue]1+3+5+13+45[/COLOR][COLOR=RoyalBlue] (Match)
1+ (Match)[/COLOR]**

This is part of my PHP code.


$this->data = array('Enquiry' => array(
            'name' => $_POST['fname'],
            'from' => $_POST['femail'],
            'address' => $_POST['faddress'],
            'tel' => $_POST['ftel'],
            'remarks' => $_POST['fremarks'],
            'wedding_date' => $_POST['fyyyy'].'-'.$_POST['fmm'].'-'.$_POST['fdd'],
            'gowns' => $_POST['savedGowns'],
            'sent' => 0
        ));

if (!preg_match('/^[0-9\+]+$/', $this->data['Enquiry']['gowns'])){
            $ok = false;
            $error = 'Invalid gown list';
        }

It keeps telling me that the string is invalid even though it is. The string I output to PHP is absolutely valid COLOR=black[/COLOR]. So I suspect could the string have become encoded when it goes into php or something? Like the “+” chars becomes something else?