Which part of the string is variable? The complete phone number, only the part after the area code-- or only the part other than the phone number?
Exact wording depends on the RegEx engine, but the basics will look something like this:
pattern = (\(\d\d\d\)\D*\d\d\d\D*\d\d\d\d)\b
output = oldstring.replace(pattern, "Please call $1 so we can discuss further")
objRegEx.Pattern = "^\D*(1)?\D*([1-9]\d{2})\D*(\d{3})\D*(\d{4})\D*$"
This seems needlessly complicated. At a minimum,
\d\d
is going to be simpler and faster than
\d{2}
Save the numbers in braces for times when you're capturing several iterations of a long pattern in parentheses.
Start by laying out in English all the possible forms your captured text can have. Are you looking strictly at phone numbers in North America, or also at other forms?
(\(\d+\)(?:\D?\d+)+)
for anything that starts with one or more numerals in parentheses.
But in practice you will need to replace \D with a group of only those characters that can actually occur in mid-phone number, such as [ /()-]. If a letter pops up in the middle of your string, you're no longer in a phone number so something has gone wrong. What if you've got two phone numbers in the same paragraph? A RegEx using only \D would capture from the beginning of one to the end of the next.
