Re: Tweak for my Perl Regex that screens for digits only

You can find some pretty thorough work on parsing phone numbers in Beast of the Number: Parsing the Feral Phone.

Update: Off the top of my head, my (simplistic) approach would be something like:

unless ($FORM{phone} =~/^(?:Ext|\d+|\)|\(|\.|\s|\+)+$/i){
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Which seems to tell the difference happily between:

+44 (1234) 0123456 Ext 123
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and

This is a test
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"If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."

John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider".

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Re^2: Tweak for my Perl Regex that screens for digits only by hackermike (Novice) on Jan 25, 2006 at 19:32 UTC
Yes, thing is that even entry level hackers will just add whatever text they want, AFTER the numbers ext. and more numbers......... I want to dis-allow ANY TEXT and allow any number of digits and the 2 exceptions of etc. and or Ext. Not just a choice of numbers OR text, but digits, only digits and NO TEXT anywhere, before or after the pemissible digits and ext. or Ext. This also question the use of the ^ and the $ as the only permissible string would be the digits with etc. or Ext. I'd rather not just have the regex remove the offending text characters - an error msg plus having to edit the fiels makes the spammers have to spend more effort to get their stuffe' posted.	[reply]
Re^3: Tweak for my Perl Regex that screens for digits only by g0n (Priest) on Jan 25, 2006 at 19:41 UTC
That expression permits only: Numbers Ext or ext The specified punctuation anywhere in the string. It fails to match if anything else is included. Update: My test case is as follows: `use strict; use warnings; my @strings; $strings[0] = "44 (1234) 123398 Ext 123"; $strings[1] = "+44 (1234) 123398 Ext 123"; $strings[2] = "44 (1234) 123398 Ext 123 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"; $strings[3] ="416-967-1111 ext. 123 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"; my $counter=0; for my $string (@strings) { if ($string =~/^(?:Ext\|\d\|\)\|\(\|\.\|\s\|\+\|\-)+$/i) { print "$counter good\n"; } $counter++; }` [download] Which returns: `0 good` [download] ~~It fails to match with a leading +, which I haven't got to the bottom of yet, but rejects all the wrong strings.~~ (I'd missed out a vital \|, which stopped the + matching - thanks to ysth for spotting it). -------------------------------------------------------------- "If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing." John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider".	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Tweak for my Perl Regex that screens for digits only by ysth (Canon) on Jan 26, 2006 at 11:33 UTC
`if ($string =~/^(?:Ext\|\d\|\)\|\(\|\.\|\s\|\+\-)+$/i)` [download] It fails to match with a leading +, which I haven't got to the bottom of yet, but rejects all the wrong strings. It only accepts the pair "+-", not individual +'s or -'s. Easier with a character class: `if ($string =~/^(?:Ext\|[-.+()\d\s])+$/i)` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^4: Tweak for my Perl Regex that screens for digits only by hackermike (Novice) on Jan 25, 2006 at 19:50 UTC
OK, I put your code in my script and when I enter: 416-967-1111 ext. 123 xxxxxxxxxxxxxx in the folrm field and submit the form The regex does not detect that there is all those x's after the numbers ext. and number sequence. If there is ANY text, anywhere in the field results, other than ext. or Ext. then I want the regex to generate an error message.	[reply]
Re^3: Tweak for my Perl Regex that screens for digits only by SamCG (Hermit) on Jan 25, 2006 at 19:47 UTC
g0n's reply does do what you asked for (mmm, with the exception that it also allows the plus sign (+), but you may want that too).	[reply]
Re^2: Tweak for my Perl Regex that screens for digits only by hackermike (Novice) on Jan 25, 2006 at 18:58 UTC
Yes, But I'm not actually parsing phone numbers as such, I'm just attempting to get whatever the submitter wants posted as a phone number whilst NOT allowing spammers to enter any text. I don't care what the numbers are, as long as it's only numbers - except wanting to permit only the characters ext. and/or Ext. - preferably between number sets.	[reply]