This is a function that uses the inbuilt PHP sscanf funtion to format phone numbers that users input into a form into a perfect number. The functino strips all non-numeric characters (dashes, dots, parantheses), extracts extensions, and even picks up the area and country code.

function formatPhone($phone) {
       if (empty($phone)) return "";
       if (strlen($phone) == 7)
               sscanf($phone, "%3s%4s", $prefix, $exchange);
       else if (strlen($phone) == 10)
               sscanf($phone, "%3s%3s%4s", $area, $prefix, $exchange);
       else if (strlen($phone) > 10)
               if(substr($phone,0,1)=='1') {
                                 sscanf($phone, "%1s%3s%3s%4s", $country, $area, $prefix, $exchange);
                             }
                             else{
                                 sscanf($phone, "%3s%3s%4s%s", $area, $prefix, $exchange, $extension);
                               }
       else
               return "unknown phone format: $phone";
       $out = "";
       $out .= isset($country) ? $country.' ' : '';
       $out .= isset($area) ? '(' . $area . ') ' : '';
       $out .= $prefix . '-' . $exchange;
       $out .= isset($extension) ? ' x' . $extension : '';
       return $out;
}