Formatted Input

What is the accepted way to get formatted data such as phone numbers and postal codes into .Net? I can see how to use regular expressions to validate input, but is it still accepted practice to put masking characters in place for area codes, dashes for zip plus 4, etc? Or are most applications just using a blank text field and validating whatever is typed in?

I know that VB6 used the masked edit control, and I know that it can be added into a NET project, but I'm guessing that is for backward compatability.

I've checked three text books and while they all cover some pretty dense stuff, they all skip over this pretty basic subject.


:o

For all my field validationin C#, i've used Perl5 regular expressions to restrict the user into only being able to type in allowed characters such as numbers, or alpha's etc..

But for particular formats I suppose you would need to create a masked control (I tend not to use older vb controls, but add functionlity to existing ones)