TELEFUN

Section: User Commands (1)
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NAME

telewords, telenum - convert telephone numbers into words and vice versa

SYNOPSIS

telewords [-dc...] ... number
telenum [-dc...] ... string ...

DESCRIPTION

Telewords takes a telephone number as the single input argument and outputs, one per line, all of the equivalent "words", in the hope that one of them will be a real word, or at least pronounceable. The digits 0 and 1, which don't have corresponding letters, are printed as themselves. Command line options allow you to change the string of characters into which any digit is mapped. This is helpful with some automatic teller machine keypads that put q and z on the 1 key. (Why doesn't the phone company do that?) The given phone number can have a arbitrary number of digits, and non-digits are ignored: '(301) 555-1212' is the same as '3015551212' (provided the space is properly quoted to the shell).

Telenum performs the reverse transform. Given a string of alphabetic characters (either case) it will print the equivalent phone number. The same remapping, using the same syntax as telewords can be used.

OPTIONS

The -d option allows you to change the mapping for any digit. The d represents any digit. This digit is followed by a string of characters which will be used as the characters into which that digit maps. Thus, to cause 1 to map to 'q' and 'z' use the command

telewords -1qz 555-1212

As many -d options can be given as desired, allowing the complete map to be redefined. If a -d option is given without a following string then mapping for that digit will be turned off, and the input digit will print as itself. Thus, the default behaviour is as if the command had been given with options -0 and -1.

DIAGNOSTICS

None.

BUGS

There is no easy way in the current implementation to allow a digit to map to a string instead of just a character. This would allow, for example, 0 to map to "oper". (I once knew a person whose number spelled INoperTUNE!)

AUTHOR

James W. Williams
williams @ cs.umd.edu

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 05:45:45 GMT, November 13, 2022