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My gf had to file an incident report for something that happened at her work for one of the juveniles (she's a clinician at this facility) and the incident report (some Justice Dept website) required a phone number.
Well, the site said (and I kid you not) enter your phone number like this:
((xxx) xxx-xxxx), for example, ((619) 555-1212)
It didn't work. She tried a variety of other combinations, none of which worked. So she cried for help and I tried a couple things, none of which worked either. So I decided to look at the source (not bad source code, written in Angular 2). Search the js files for "phone", I found the regex, which did not allow for parens. So, contrary to the instructions, you had to enter:
xxx xxx-xxxx or xxx-xxx-xxxx or even xxx+xxx+xxxx, I assume to actually handle international numbers like +xx xxx xxx-xxxx, or maybe extensions, whatever, basically, any combination of digits, +'s and -'s between length 7 and 30.
Problem solved! ![Jig | [Dance]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/jig.gif)
Of course, you wouldn't have really needed a programmer if she'd simply tried it without any parens, but the instructions were so wrong and got even me thinking in a particular mindset, that I didn't try without any parens either!
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555-1212 regardless of area code is the national directory assistance. Sorry if you knew that.
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Ron Anders wrote: Sorry if you knew that.
Of course I knew that. I was just using it as an example, like they do in old movies. 
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So ... what you are saying is that every home needs a programmer to get around the mistakes made by other programmers? 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: what you are saying is that every home needs a programmer to get around the mistakes made by other programmers?
Precisely! Now if only I could bill my gf for "services rendered"!
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You might want to rethink that: I suspect her "hourly rate" for rendering "services" might be higher than yours ...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It might be "free", in the age old principle that sex is like software:
"Sex Software for free costs much more than sex software for money"
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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She's your GF, your already paying ....
Oh Sorry. That's not what you meant is it
<g>
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OriginalGriff wrote:
So ... what you are saying is that every home needs a programmer to get around the mistakes made by other programmers?
More like a Career Coder as opposed to the Drag-n-Drop-Development-Dude
Director of Transmogrification Services
Shinobi of Query Language
Master of Yoda Conditional
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 Hah! that picture looked really familiar but I couldn't quite place it, and I tried not cheat by looking at the URL, but gave up even though I had watched the Matrix movies on Netflix recently.
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Yeah the freakish Key-Maker
Starting to think people post kid pics in their profiles because that was the last time they were cute - Jeremy Falcon.
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So did you let the site's admin know of its deficiency?
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Marc Clifton wrote: Well, the site said (and I kid you not) enter your phone number like this:
((xxx) xxx-xxxx), for example, ((619) 555-1212)
Who in their right minds would even think of such a ridiculous format? 
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Had a very similar issue with a client. When a new customer registers for an account, he or she is required to enter a password. So they try to enter one, and get an error message that the password is not "complex" enough and to try again. Unfortunately it never says what the minimum password requirements are, so you have to keep guessing... 
So the manager there asked me to figure out what this should be. I go into the code and find this horrendously complex regex expression in it. Fortunately there was also a comment stating that you need to have
Minimum 8 characters at least 1 Uppercase Alphabet, 1 Lowercase Alphabet, 1 Number and 1 Special Character: @$!%*?&
And checking against the regex this appeared to be correct. So I forward this information to the manager.
A few weeks later I get a call back from the manager, stating that he is attempting to set up one of the new staff members in the system, and he is still having that issue with the password, despite following the above conventions. The password was something like
CompanyName123!@#
So, I am testing this out again, using a regex tester and this password. Finally figured out that it was restricting the password to only those characters, and that the "#" at the end was failing the test. 
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Isn't xxx xxx-xxxx one of the other things one tries for US phone numbers? (Another being xxxxxxxxxx)
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I know this is a few days old, but it helped me out registering for the MSFT IoT Web Conference fistoosh. I didn't sleuth it like you but when the submit button did nothing (even using <gulp> Edge), I put my area code IN parens and it worked.
Thank you.
Arguing with a woman is like reading the Software License Agreement. In the end, you ignore everything and click "I agree".
Anonymous
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I had this in reverse. Years ago a person used a regex (I thought to verify data after entered, but NO, it was applied as you typed). So, if you did NOT enter it as expected: (###) ###-#### it would not take it. Worse, the space after the right parens was required. Worse, it was into a FORM field, where there was NO PLACE To tell the user how to format the phone number.
So, you get to this field. No idea the format required, you start typing #s, and it beeps.
I got in trouble for the "tone" of my email. I went to the OWNERS office, and pulled it up, and I gave him 2 minutes to enter his phone number into the field. After 30 seconds he was ready to throw his PC against a wall. I gave him the "(" hint, he does (###) and the incessant beeping starts again (because of that space)... He was done.
Good news. We NEVER published it like that! I may have been labeled "Doesn't play well with others!" LOL...
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I plead total technical ignorance at all times. Reduces expectations and workload.
When I have no choice but to help, however, I make them leave the room so they can't see my mojo in action.
Maintains my aura of Gandalfian wizardry. 
Cheers,
Mike Fidler
"I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright
"I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright
"I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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Telephone numbers are so basic that that validation shouldn't be required (Works or doesn't). Country code, Region code and Number. Shouldn't even need to know the Country code. Parenthesis +/-() should not be required. Oh, I forgot. You must be American.
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Oh, forgot: You still use FAX, Codger....
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This is why bureaucracies have bad reputations. All it takes is one idiot and now there's at least hundreds maybe thousands of us with bad thoughts about who the hell this is.
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Proof that devs do know what we are doing. 
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Last year, I unlocked a Windows notebook that had french keypad. The guy who sent it to me, forgot the exact password, but gave some hints around the actual word and then vanished. I had to think a bit hard about the possibilities of the word, and the moment login screen said "Welcome!".. 
