[RESOLVED] Format a string

aalcantara

How easy it is in PHP to do the following?

$phone = 1234567890;

$phone = ?????;

echo $phone;

where the result will become (123)456-7890

Is there such function that can easily format a string or can you point me to a reference/article how to achieve this?

Thanks.

laserlight

There are many ways. One way would be to use a regular expression, e.g.,

$phone = 123456789;
$phone = preg_replace('/^(\d{3})(\d{3})(\d{4})$/', '($1)$2-$3', $phone);

You could also check if the input format was correct to begin with, e.g.,

$phone = 123456789;
$phone = preg_replace('/^(\d{3})(\d{3})(\d{4})$/', '($1)$2-$3', $phone, -1, $count);
if ($count == 0) {
    // Input format incorrect.
}

NogDog

Just because there's always more than one way to do it:

$phone = '1234567890';
$formatted = sprintf(
   '(%s)%s-%s',
   substr($phone,0,3),
   substr($phone,3,3),
   substr($phone,6,4)
);
echo $formatted;

aalcantara

Thanks for the info. Can we please go 1 step further?

What if the $phone does not have the proper digits, how would you do it so it just stays as is?

example:
$phone = 1234567

result should stay as is 1234567.

Basically, what I am trying to achieve here is how to dynamically format a string to a specified format, anyone have codes similar to this.

format passed = (ddd) ddd-dddd
or
format passed = 1-ddd-ddd-dddd

something like this... formatstring($phone, $format)

Thanks again for the help, you guys are awesome.

laserlight

What if the $phone does not have the proper digits, how would you do it so it just stays as is?

That's what my example does. NogDog's example does the same, as long as you do not assign $formatted to $phone.

EDIT: Wooh, post #10000.

aalcantara

Any format string functions that you may have known similar to formatting a string value to given format, rather than giving regex format and regex replace pattern?

laserlight

Any format string functions that you may have known similar to formatting a string value to given format, rather than giving regex format and regex replace pattern?

No. What you could do, however, is use regex to format your custom format string to a regex format/replace pattern, and then apply the regex replacement to the input.

leatherback

laserlight wrote:
That's what my example does. NogDog's example does the same, as long as you do not assign $formatted to $phone.

EDIT: Wooh, post #10000.

Pfff.. You must spent a lot of time on these forums.. How did you outrun me so badly (Besides my absence for months at a time of course). Ah well, Congrats.

aalcantara

Ok, thanks

we will make our data formatting to RegEX replace standard