PHP match functions

[phatmonkey]

Ok, what I am basically trying to do is to get an amount of hits from an external html page, and putting it into a variable. I know a piece of unique start code in front of the number, and a some code that goes after the number. I came up with this:

// Open the page
$handle = fopen($hitsurl,"r");

// Read it and put it into a variable
$hitpage = fread($handle,100000);

// Sort out the codestart/ends to take out anything that affects the code
$codestartfixed = str_replace("/", "\/", $codestart);
$codeendfixed = str_replace("/", "\/", $codeend);

// Look through the page to find the number between the start and end code
preg_match("/$codestartfixed(.*)$codeendfixed/isU",$hitpage,$match);

echo " - $match[0] hits";

$codestart = code in front of number
$codeend = code after number
$hitsurl = the url of the page
Obviously assuming its smaller than 100k.

But this echos "- hits". What have i done wrong?