Tip # 23 - Phone Edits

It is often the case that an edit that we use all the time like the phone edit, which changes the phone number to a nice view needs some modifications.

phone: \ <"(" N N N <")"> <" "> N N N <"-"> N N N N | N N N <"-"> N N N N

This edit will accept a 10 or 7 digit phone number, add the parenthesis, dashes and spaces and right justify the result. A list of phone numbers entered with this edit would look like this:

(412) 555-1212

          512-1212

Now it sometimes happens that for certain purposes the phone number must be converted to just numbers.    For that purpose another edit comes in handy.

UNPHONE: { !"("! | !")"! | !"-"! | !" "! | * }

This edit will eliminate the characters we do not want and leave all the numbers.  The wildcard (*) will allow for any other characters to be accepted.  To apply this edit you can take a field number that had a phone number such as 5 and use the new command DOEDIT.

dy=doedit(5,"unphone")

Now dy had the result of the change from the phone edit to the unphone edit.

4125551212

5121212

Our two phone numbers would be changed as shown.

 

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Written by Nancy Palmquist

Copyright, 1997 by Virtual Software Systems.  All rights reserved.