There may be another issue (and I did not read this whole thread, just these notes that you linked me to) but @stof is correct. That should be ```'/(close|closes|fix|fixes) #([0-9]+)/i'```. If it's currently working as-is, it's an unintended side-effect.  Note that changing to parenthesis will change the index number of ```$matches```.

I would probably also account for multiple spaces by changing to ```'/(close|closes|fix|fixes)\s+#([0-9]+)/i'```