Regular Expressions

[John Smith]

Hello all:

I was wondering if someone had a good regular expression
for a phone number. I came up w/on that does validation to
the point of having an optional area code, but I would like
to restrict the length of the entire number entered. For
example, if they enter an eight digit number it would not
match but a seven digit number would. The following is
what I have been trying but it does not work:

[0-9]{3}[-| ]?[0-9]{4}

Which says 3 digits then either a dash, space or nothing,
followed by four digits.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

John

[Brian Davis]

Here is one I came up with:

^(((\((?<par>))?)\d{3}(?(par)\)|)[ \-])?\d{3}[ \-]?\d{4}$

It matches a 3 digit area code, optionally enclosed in
parentheses, followed by a space, dash, or nothing, then
three digits, a space, dash or nothing, then four digits.

Here are some example matches:

[phone]
(123)4567890
123-456-7890
1234567890
456-7890
(as well as some fishy ones like)
123456-7890
(123)-456 7890
Here are some example NON-matches

(123 456-7890 - No matching close parenthesis
1 1234567890 - Leading 1 (may be important to allow)?
123 456 7890 - Double spacing
You probably want to run this through a lot more checks
to make sure it matches what you want, and, more
importantly, doesn't match what you don't want.

If you want to check out other expressions,
http://www.regexlib.com has some useful ones.
Brian Davis
www.knowdotnet.com

-----Original Message-----
Hello all:

I was wondering if someone had a good regular expression
for a phone number. I came up w/on that does validation tothe point of having an optional area code, but I would liketo restrict the length of the entire number entered. For
example, if they enter an eight digit number it would not
match but a seven digit number would. The following is
what I have been trying but it does not work:

[0-9]{3}[-| ]?[0-9]{4}

Which says 3 digits then either a dash, space or nothing,
followed by four digits.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

John
.

[John Smith]

Hey, thanks for the info, I too had a similar one that included checking
for an area code, but I will give your a try. The main thing I was
after was restricting length as well (i.e. if they entered 8 digits it
should not match) but mine still does, so I'll see what yours does.

Thanks again,

John Smith

*** Sent via Developersdex http://www.developersdex.com ***
Don't just participate in USENET...get rewarded for it!