AutoHotkey Community

Joso · Joined: 09 Mar 2010 Posts: 11

841 pages of questions .. if someone has already invented this wheel, I'd appreciate help finding it.

I want to send a phone number in various possible formats (eg 305-888-6160 3058886160 (305) 888-6160) to a variable. (for further use within a program)

The program would start from the cursor being located anywhere within a string of numbers, spaces and punctuation comprising a phone number.

Thanks.

Joe

Guest · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 4:29 pm Post subject:

highlight the text/numbers and ^c to copy it
then u can StringReplace all non-digit characters

Joso · Joined: 09 Mar 2010 Posts: 11

I want the program to highlight the phone number string for me. - I want it to figure out what's a phone number and what's not. Clearer?

MacroGeek · Joined: 08 Mar 2010 Posts: 4 Location: Toronto

Joso · Joined: 09 Mar 2010 Posts: 11

Thanks for thinking about this - I appreciate it.

The phone number could appear in a variety of formats (3058886160 305-888-6160 (305) 888-6160) sometimes within a sentence with spaces on both sides of the number and sometimes at the beginning or end of a line of text - we could rule out international numbers and numbers containing letters (1-800-CALLPAIN eg) to keep things fairly straightforward. The phone number would always consist of 10 numbers, but the length of the string containing those 10 numbers might vary depending on the format used.

I'm thinking that the logic of the program would be to examine each character moving in one direction until a character other than (123456789-(){space}) was encountered, then move back the other way using the same test - when both "ends" of the phone number were determined, the string would be highlighted and saved to the clipboard.

I'd be surprised if no one has worked out an algorithm for this sort of search previously - if not - maybe I'll have to start from scratch.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

emmanuel d · Joined: 29 Jan 2009 Posts: 436 Location: Belgium

something like this?:

Guest · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 6:01 pm Post subject:

Joso · Joined: 09 Mar 2010 Posts: 11

sinkfaze · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2010 9:11 pm Post subject:

Could you provide us a sample of the data you're trying to extract the phone number from?
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Murx · Guest

What about to simply extract all digits from the string using RegExMatch() ?

Joso · Joined: 09 Mar 2010 Posts: 11

[VxE] · Joined: 07 Oct 2006 Posts: 3254 Location: Simi Valley, CA

Joso · Joined: 09 Mar 2010 Posts: 11

; Regex = Abracadabra

wow! - This is just the sort of tool I'm looking for - now I know how I'll spend my Saturday. Thanks alot.

Joe

Joso · Joined: 09 Mar 2010 Posts: 11

my oldest son told me when he was a small child that the purpose of living was "to meet new people and learn new things" - Well today I learned some new things. Thank you.

Just in case I'm not the only one in the dark, here's what I figured out your code meant:

RegexMatch( Clip, "[(). \-\d]{10,}", phone )
String, "[find arg]", output var
"[().space - any digit](at least 10 digits for a match}"

&& RegexMatch( phone := RegexReplace( phone, "\D" ), "^\d{10}$", phone ) ; nested regex = Ballalaa kazaam

AND set string "phone" = "phone" with any non-digit characters removed
find arg: "or any digit {at least 10 digits long}from the end of the string"

then format it:
FPhone := "(" SubStr( phone, 1, 3 ) ") " SubStr( phone, 4, 3 ) "-" SubStr( phone, 7, 4)
var set to ( 1st 3#s) ) next 3# - next 4#

- Thanks to this tool, I have a nifty little dialer program that will keep me from misdialing numbers all day long. It runs under windows XP, and uses the dialing function of Outlook 2003 or 2007. After I've road tested it for a week or so, if anyone's interested in the code, I'll be happy to share.

Thanks again

Joe