Regular Expression Help

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks,
I am trying to check for phone number input using the regular expression below, but I can't understand why it isn't matching, any help or suggestions in how I could improve my code to check phone number format like:
(555) 324-1233
555 - 324-1234
1 555 342-1234

It may or may not have spaces in between or dashes as well but looking at the regular expression that I have it should be very flexible in matching phone members.
Thanks for the help!

$phone_number = "(555) 324-1233";

if ($phone_number =~/^[(]?(d{0,3})[)]?[s]?[-]?(d{3})[s]?[-]?(d{4})[s]?
+[x]?(d*)$/){
#if ($phone_number =~/^(\D*\d{3}?)(\D*\d{3}?)(\D*\d{4}?)(\D*$)/){

    #// we have a match, dump sub-patterns to $matches
    $phone = $1; #// original number
    $area_code = $2;    #// 3-digit area code
    $exchange = $3;     #// 3-digit exchange
    $number = $4;       #// 4-digit number
    $extension = $5;    #// extension
    
    print "**** $phone ** $area_code ** $exchange ** $number ** $exten
+sion ***** ";
    
}else{print "no match";}
[download]

Comment on Regular Expression Help Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Regular Expression Help by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Mar 03, 2005 at 16:54 UTC
How do I parse a telephone number? Another LostS Question - Phone Number Checks Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply]
Re: Regular Expression Help by Tanktalus (Canon) on Mar 03, 2005 at 16:19 UTC
Here's the code I tested ... `use strict; my @p = ( '(555) 324-1233', '555 - 324-1234', '555 - 324-1234x204', '1 555 342 1234', ); my $re = qr/(?:1\s)?$?(\d{3})$?\s-?\s*(\d{3})[\s-]?(\d{4})(?:x(\d+ +))?/; for my $p (@p) { if ($p =~ $re) { printf "phone number = %s\n" . "area code = %s\n" . "exchange = %s\n" . "number = %s\n" . "extention = %s\n", $p, $1, $2, $3, $4 ? $4 : 'none'; } else { print "[$p] doesn't look like a phone number to me\n"; } }` [download] Output: `phone number = (555) 324-1233 area code = 555 exchange = 324 number = 1233 extention = none phone number = 555 - 324-1234 area code = 555 exchange = 324 number = 1234 extention = none phone number = 555 - 324-1234x204 area code = 555 exchange = 324 number = 1234 extention = 204 phone number = 1 555 342 1234 area code = 555 exchange = 342 number = 1234 extention = none` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Regular Expression Help by ikegami (Patriarch) on Mar 03, 2005 at 16:21 UTC
Might be more versatile and easier to read to do: `$_ = $phone_number; s/[() -]//g; # Remove seperators, or #s/[^0-9xX]//g; # Remove non-digits. s/^1//; die("Unrecognize phone number format.\n") unless /^(\d{3})(\d{3})(\d{4})(?:[xX](\d+))$/; $area_code = $1; $exchange = $2; $number = $3; $extension = $4; $clean_phone = join('-', $area_code, $exchange, $number); $clean_phone .= "x$extention" if defined $extention;` [download] By the way, both yours and mine only work with North American phone numbers.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Regular Expression Help by davido (Cardinal) on Mar 03, 2005 at 16:15 UTC
`d` and `s` are not metacharacters. `\d` and `\s` are. That's one problem. Dave	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Regular Expression Help by prasadbabu (Prior) on Mar 03, 2005 at 16:15 UTC
`You have used [s]? which is wrong, you should use [\s]? for space.` Prasad	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Regular Expression Help by JediWizard (Deacon) on Mar 03, 2005 at 16:38 UTC
I'd just like to point out `\s` by itself does not need to be in a character class. `\s` will work just as well as `[\s]`. It may also make the expression more robust to use `\s*` as opposed to `[\s]?`. May the Force be with you	[reply] [d/l] [select]