Re: Telephone number type

Thank you for taking the time for this thorough analysis Michael.

> In some business cards in my collection, parentheses are used not
> around an area code but around the country code, sometimes with the
> leading "+" inside the parentheses.  A card (from someone in the EU
> bureaucracy — which I expect means the pattern is not idiosyncratic to
> one individual has:
>
>   (+352) 999 99-99999

This would be an easy fix.

>   (1) 905 999 9999

This is already covered.

> Sometimes parentheses are used around a part of the number used in
> some cases but not in others.  In all the cases I remember seeing,
> it’s a zero between the country code and the in-country number; the
> parentheses appear to mean “when calling internationally, omit the
> zero, and when calling within the country omit the country code and
> include the zero”.  E.g.
>
>    +44 (0) 9999 999999

This is already covered.

> My collection of business cards includes examples with the following
> characters used as separators in addition to parentheses, blank, and
> ‘-‘:
>  . (i.e. full stop)
>   · (i.e. mid-dot)
>   /
>   “  “ (i.e. two blanks, or extra-wide blank)
>   |

I'm proposing not to allow these.

>   800,999.9999 x349
>   (1) 905 999 9999 x99999

Indeed, I was proposing not accepting extensions.

> Also: it appears to be a consequence of the regex that any two hyphens
> must be separated by at least two decimal digits.

Oops, that wasn't the intention. Thanks for spotting this.

> Do any telephone systems in the world still use lettered exchanges?
> The first telephone number I learned as a child began not "366" but
> "EM-6" or "Emerson 6".  If that convention is still in use anywhere,
> letters will be needed to represent it.

Not since automation, I believe.

> And of course many commercial organizations use numbers that spell out
> words; the phone-in number for the quiz show "Whad'Ya Know" (now
> defunct), which ran on public radio stations in the U.S. for thirty
> years, was 1-800-WHA-KNOW.  Do such numbers need to be supported?

No :-)

> To try to boil it down, the following number patterns are not
> supported by the regex given; whether they should be is in each case a
> policy question:
>
>   a  (+352) 999 99-99999
Will fix
>   b  999.999.9999
Propose to disallow.
>   c  0711/9999-999
Propose to disallow.
>   d  613  999-9999 (two blanks or one-em space after area code)
This seems to work.
>   e +33 | 99 99 99 99
Propose to disallow.
>   f  800,999.9999 x349
Propose to disallow.
>   g  (1) 905 999 9999 x99999
Propose to disallow.
>   h  +420-2-9999-9999
Will fix
>   i  EM6-9999
Propose to disallow.
>   j  1-800-WHA-KNOW
Propose to disallow.
> The following number patterns are supported (but use parentheses to
> enclose something other than an area code)
>
>   z  (1) 905 999 9999
Already works
>   y  +44 (0) 9999 999999
Already works

> I thank you for an entertaining couple of hours.  (The project leader
> to whom I will explain in 45 minutes that I got nothing done on that
> project this morning because I was thinking about telephone numbers
> may however be less inclined to thank you.  Oh, well.)

:-)

Thanks for donating a couple of hours to us!

Steven

>
> ********************************************
> C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
> Black Mesa Technologies LLC
> cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com
> http://www.blackmesatech.com
> ********************************************
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 13 September 2017 10:18:58 UTC