Hi All,

I am doing a perl script validation for Phone numbers.
The normal phone number format is 01-32145.

I need to do two validations for the phone number

1) A valid phone number can have at least two digits as prefix and at least five digits as postfix. e.g. 01-01011

2) A valid phnoe number can't contain only the digit "0" in either area code or phone number e.g. 00-11111 or 01-00000 is not allowed.

I am able to do the first validation, but not the second ..

i am pasting my code part here.. can you please help me to add the second validation inside my current code.

------------------------------

open(TMPOUTPUT, "<$tmp_output_file") or die "Can't open output";
open(OUTPUT, ">$output_file") or die "Can't open output";

while ($line = <TMPOUTPUT>)
{
$line =~ s/ +\n//;
($cur_phone, $xxxxxx, $xxxxxx) = split(";", $line);
($cur_phone_prefix, $cur_phone_postfix) = split("-", $cur_phone);

$length_prefix = length ($cur_phone_prefix);
$length_postfix = length ($cur_phone_postfix);
if ($length_prefix < 2 || $length_postfix < 5 )
{
print "Invalid phone number: $cur_phone \n";
}
else
{
print "Valid phone number: $cur_phone \n";
}
}
close TMPOUTPUT;
close OUTPUT;

Thanks in advance

Use the character class grouping [] combined with the ^ (meaning characters not in this class).

# check #1 - phone number should be at least digits, then a dash, then
# at least 5 digits
# check #2 - first section cannot be all 0's
# check #3 - second section cannot be all 0's
# Quick reg exp refresh
# \d = digit
# \d{n,} = at least n digits
# ^ - start of string
# \ escape a metacharacter (like a dash) to mean its literal value
# $ - end of string
# [] character class (match anything inside of the brackets
# [^] character class negated (match on anything NOT inside the brackets

### if $phone_number is the number you want to check
if (
$phone_number =~ /^\d{2,}\-\d{5,}$/ ### check #1
and $phone_number =~ /^[^0]{2,}\-/ ### check #2
and $phone_number =~ /\-[^0]{5,}$/ ### check #3
) {
print "GOOD: $phone_number\n";
} else {
print "BAD: $phone_number\n";
}

You could also use the !~ operator to do check 2 and 3
e.g. $phone_number !~ /^0+\-/
or
$phone_number !~ /^0{2,}-/

Hi ,

THanks for the help..
I have tried the code and the third one "# check #3 - second section cannot be all 0's " is not working properly...

Can you please help me to find out what went wrong ?

You may wish to explain what is not working properly?
ie. is it specific data that is not working?

Hi ,

If ia m giving input phnoe number as 01-00000 , still this code returns GOOD phone number.


Regards,
Harris

Well that is curious, because I copy/pasted that code into a script and whenever
either part of the number has a zero in it I am told the number is BAD??
So I would be interested to know if you changed any of it as our results are very different?

However, this seems to work for me:

Lots of reasons a regular expression match can fail. Off the top of my head, I'd guess you have white space somewhere in your string. Try putting single quotes or some other character around the GOOD/BAD messages. For example:

print "BAD: '$phone_number'\n";

If $phone_number == '01-00000\n' or '01-00000 ' the third check will fail.

For a simple case like this one, print statements are usually enough to figure out what's going wrong. For more complex cases, you can break the 3 checks into individual checks and nest them (e.g. if (check 1) { if (check 2) { if (check 3) { ... which makes it easier to figure out exactly which check is failing.

Finally, I'd suggest learning about perl -d (the perl debugger). Just type perl -d <your perl program + options> and then type h at the prompt. This is an invaluable tool for debugging issues of any complexity.

also, all the code here is off the top of my head w/o any testing... so don't assume it just works. I think the idea is good and I tried to write it correctly, but "code that is not tested does not work correctly".

Hi Grail/Majorleap,

THe code is working fine for me now
For supporting more than 2 charcters in prefix and morethan 5 characters in postfix i added a comma in the first condition...

#!/bin/perl

my $phone_number;

print "enter phone number\n";
chomp ($phone_number = <STDIN>);

if ($phone_number =~ /^\d{2,}\-\d{5,}$/ and $phone_number !~ /^0{2}\-/ and $phone_number !~ /\-0{5}$/)
{
print "GOOD: $phone_number\n";
}
else
{
print "BAD: $phone_number\n";
}
I have tested this and working in all conditions...
Thanks alot for both of yours help and comments.

Ragrds,
Harris

Great that you found a working solution, please don't forget to mark as SOLVED.