How to format a 10-digit into a phone number?

[Bruce Jin]

DecimalFormat myFormatter = new DecimalFormat("( ) - ");
String output = myFormatter.format(1234567890);
System.out.println("result=" + output);
The output is
( ) - 1234567890
How to make it [phone]
Thanks

[Jessica Sant]

Check out the API for java.text.DecimalFormat.
You need to use the Special Character Patterns they define to tell instruct the DecimalFormatter where to put the digits in relation to the "( ) -"

SYMBOL   LOCATION  MEANING
0        Number    Digit
#        Number    Digit, zero shows as absent

[ June 03, 2002: Message edited by: Jessica Sant ]

[Jessica Sant]

hmmmm after looking at that class... I don't know if it can be used to do what you need it to. You might be better off converting the number to a StringBuffer and creating your own class to manipluate it.

[Jamie Robertson]

I think you need to something a little more crude than use the Format class. Something like:

String input = Integer.toString( 1234567890 );
String output = "(" + input.substring( 0,3 ) + ") " + input.substring( 3,6 ) + "-" + input.substring( 6,10 );
System.out.println("result=" + output);

Jamie

[Bruce Jin]

Thanks for the replies.
I am a little surprised that Java format class can’t do this. Other languages such as RPG, COBOL can do this easily.

[David Koontz]

Just submitted a class TelephoneNumber to do phone formating to
SourceForge
http://sourceforge.net/snippet/detail.php?type=snippet&id=101225
David
-- snip --
The TelephoneNumber class represents a US telephone number.
This class contains many constructors for various uses. It then stores the telephone number internally in seperate codes (area code, exchange, etc.). This encourages
use of the format method to output the telephone number in any style the programmer wishes.
[needs i18n work]
Example usage:
long number = 8005551212L;
TelephoneNumber phone = new TelephoneNumber(number);
StringBuffer msg = new StringBuffer("Call me at ");
msg.append(phone.format());
// msg is now "Call me at [phone]"