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From: Sandman <mr@sandman.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.php
Subject: Phone number formatting
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:39:17 +0100
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So, I have a list of phone numbers in various formats I.e. the users 
have written them in different styles, with and without dashes, spaces 
and so on.

Now I want to format them. I have a text file with all the area codes 
for Sweden, so I remove any non-digit character from the phone number 
and then I parse out the area code. I am now left with the phone 
number. An example:

    In-data: 0703051947
    Parse out area code: 070
    Phone number: 3051947

Now, I have an array with formattings, that looks like this:

$formats = array("### ##", "## ## ##", "### ## ##");

The phone number above is never more than 7 digits long (as far as I 
know) in Sweden, so these formats should suffice. Let me explain, in 
the array, we have formats for 5, 6  and 7 digit phone numbers, set up 
in a specific way. So this phone number in my example above is 7 
digits, so it should be formatted as such:

    305 19 47

With me so far? What I don't know is exactly how to do it. This is my 
code thus far:

    $number = "3051947";
    foreach ($formats as $f){
        $chars = strlen(preg_replace("/[^#]/", "", $f));
    }

So, $chars contains the number of digits the given format takes, and 
then I want to compare it to how many digits I have in $number.

My problem:

I'm not sure where to start in converting $number into a string that 
matches the matching format, I.e. replace the first "#" with 3, the 
second with 0 and so on.

Any hints or pointers?


-- 
Sandman[.net]