From: dmhills{at}attglobal.net (Don Hills)

In article , Winston Smith
 wrote:
>How would someone subdivide the New Zealand telephone number
>6433085201 ?  From my phone book I can parse off the telephone
>international country code.  That would make the phone number
>64-33085201 , but how would one group the trailing digits?

64 = Country Code
3 = Area Code
308-5201 = uniform 7 digit phone number

We used to have an odd system with variable length area codes and variable
length phone numbers, but it was all unified to the above format about 15
to 20 years ago. Part of the project was to put the whole country's
directory into an online system for directory assistance. I wrote the code
that parsed and converted the directory files (in a format suitable for
feeding to a laser typesetter) into lexical format for the lookup database.

>    (Is 'SI" correct for 'South Island' or should that be 'So.' ?)

"SI" is close enough.
There's not normally a requirement to specify North or South Island.

The phone books for the whole country are on the Web (www.whitepages.co.nz)
as are the Yellow Pages (www.yellowpages.co.nz).

--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5