format phone number?

[iBuddy]

What Im trying to do is format a field in my database ...the phone number field. Wehn I have the phone number saved in the database I have it as xxxxxxxxxx digits with no hyphens because I use this to pull the records up. However, when I display the phone number how can I have it to display
(xxx) xxx-xxxx every time?

[Stoned_Gecko]

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is to use substr.

$old_phone = "1234567890";
$area_code = substr($old_phone,0,3);
$prefix  = substr($old_phone,3,3);
$suffix = substr($old_phone,6,4);
$new_phone = "($area_code) $prefix-$suffix";

I know there is a better way of doing it though.