JPH06203075A - Electronic telephone directory - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the retrieval efficiency of an electronic telephone directory using an automatically retrievable storage means such as a memory cell or the like. CONSTITUTION:A storage area provided in the storage means is divided into two, normal telephone number data or the like are stored in a first storage area 5a, data with a relatively higher use frequency are selectively stored in a second storage area 5b and the second storage area 5b is preferentially retrieved at the time of retrieving a telephone number. The first storage area 5a is retrived only when the desired data are not present in the second storage area 5b.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a telephone, and more particularly to a telephone having a telephone directory function using a storage means capable of searching information.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a so-called electronic telephone directory has been built in or added to a telephone, and a so-called electronic telephone directory has been stored in the telephone so that the telephone number can be retrieved. The technology of incorporating it was widely known. Most of these have been designed to display search results and the like using a display device built in the telephone body or the handset. Therefore, there is a limit to the amount of information that can be displayed at one time.

[0003]

For this reason, when the amount of information to be searched increases, the following problems may come to the surface, mainly in terms of usability.

First, when there are many candidate telephone numbers, these candidates cannot be displayed at the same time.
Therefore, the candidates are displayed in several steps, but the number of operating procedures is increased to switch the display. The time required also increases. Also, it becomes difficult to trace the memory while comparing the candidates and find the desired telephone number.

Second, as the number of telephone numbers to be searched increases, the process itself for selecting candidates takes time. This often depends on the performance of the hardware such as the response speed of the memory element and the processing speed of the arithmetic element that executes the search, and cannot be an effective countermeasure unless the number of search targets is reduced. If such a problem occurs, the advantages of the electronic telephone directory such as high speed and automatic search cannot be fully utilized.

[0006]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, in the present invention, in addition to a normal storage area for storing all registered telephone numbers, priority is given to a part of the memory element. In addition to providing a special storage area for searching, a means for copying the telephone number data from the normal storage area to the special storage area for priority search is provided.

[0007]

When the telephone number is searched, the special storage area for the priority search is searched first. If the desired telephone number is not stored in this area, another storage area is searched.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing an outline of the configuration of an electronic telephone directory according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is a 10-key, and it is also possible to share the one equipped in a normal telephone. 2 is an input control circuit,
3 is a CPU, 4 is an I / O port, 5 is a memory for storing a telephone number, and is a first storage area 5a and a second storage area 5
It consists of b. Reference numeral 6 is a display control circuit having a built-in video RAM and the like, and 7 is a display unit for displaying a telephone number or the like. Figure 2
3 is a flow chart showing a process of registering and storing telephone number data in the system of the embodiment of the present invention. The process of registering a telephone number will be described below with reference to FIG.

First, in step 101, the first storage area is designated as an operation target. Then step 1
In 02, necessary data such as a telephone number and a name are input. When the data input for one case is completed, it is checked in step 103 whether or not there is an empty area in which data is not stored in the first storage area. If no free area is found here, a warning message is issued in step 104, and the processing ends.

On the other hand, when a free area is found in the first storage area, the data is stored in the free area in step 105. At this time, a parameter called a search frequency index is set in addition to the data input by the user. The search frequency index is a variable that is independently set for each data item, and indicates how frequently the registered data is used, as will be described later, by the size of the value. In this embodiment, an initial value of 20 is set when data is registered. When one data item including the search frequency index is registered, it is determined in step 106 whether or not the next data input is to be performed subsequently. If the user wants to continue inputting, the processing from step 102 onward is repeatedly executed. On the other hand, if no input is required, the process ends.

After that, the input data is copied from the first storage area 5a to the second storage area 5b. This operation will be described with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4. First,
Immediately after the start of the operation, as shown in FIG.
In 01, the first storage area is designated as the processing target. Next, in steps 202 to 205, the search frequency index is examined for each data item in the entire first storage area. The access is started in step 202, and the first is started in step 203.
While confirming whether the processing has been completed for the entire storage area, a series of processing of checking the search frequency index in step 204 is repeated. Data having a high search frequency index is often a search target as described later. That is, the user often searches for the data and is considered to be frequently used. In this flow chart, data with a search frequency index of 25 or more is considered to be frequently used. Therefore,
When the frequently used data is detected in step 204, it is copied to the second storage area by the processing described below. The other data is not processed at all. In this way, the search frequency index is checked for all the data in the first storage area, and when it is detected that the processing is completed for all the data in the step, the processing ends.

Next, data is copied to the second storage area, but the capacity of this second storage area 5b is relatively small. Therefore, when copying new data to the second storage area 5b, old data, that is, data with low frequency of use is erased as necessary to create a free area,
You need to copy the new data there. Therefore,
The process shown in FIG. 4 is executed.

In step 301 shown in FIG. 4, first, the second storage area 5b is designated as the operation target. Next, in step 302, it is checked whether or not there is a free area in the second storage area 5b. If there is a free area, it is not necessary to add another free area.
Jump to.

On the other hand, if there is no free area in the second storage area 5b, it is necessary to delete the least frequently used data in order to create a free area. Therefore, in step 303 or step 306, data having the smallest search frequency index is selected for all data areas, and the corresponding data is deleted to create a free area. Access from the step 303 to the second storage area 5b is started,
In step 304, it is checked whether or not the processing has been completed for all of the second storage area 5b, and in step 305, the telephone number with the smallest search frequency index is searched. The telephone number found here is deleted from the memory in step 306. In step 307, the telephone number is copied from the first storage area to the free area thus created. Then, even if it seems that the free space is still insufficient, step 30
The processes after 3 are repeated. By erasing and copying the data in this way, it is possible to accumulate frequently used data in the second storage area 5b.

A telephone number is searched for the data thus accumulated. The contents of this processing are shown in FIG. In step 401 of FIG. 5, first, the second storage area 5b is designated as the search target, and in step 402, the actual search is performed. This process may be based on a well-known search method for ordinary electronic telephone directories and databases. When the target telephone number is found from the second storage area 5b and detected in step 403, the target telephone number is displayed on the display unit 7 in step 404, and then step 408 and the following step 409.
At, the search frequency index is rewritten. This rewriting records that a specific telephone number was the target of the search, and this processing inevitably increases the search frequency index for telephone numbers that are frequently searched. On the other hand, the search frequency index tends to be small for telephone numbers of distant parties, etc., which are not usually the purpose of the search. After this rewriting, the process ends.

On the other hand, the target telephone number is the second storage area 5b.
If not stored in step S405, it is checked in step 405 whether the first storage area 5a has already been designated as a search target. If it has already been designated, it means that the target telephone number has not been stored in the first storage area 5a either. Therefore, in step 406, a warning message indicating that the target telephone number is not stored is displayed on the display unit 7. Display and end the search process. On the other hand, the first
If the storage area 5a has not been designated, the first storage area 5a is designated again as the search target, and the search processing from step 402 onward is executed.

In the present embodiment, even if the data is erased from the second storage area 5b, or if the data is erased from the first storage area to the second storage area 5b.
Even if the data is transferred to the storage area 5b, the data in the first storage area is not erased. Therefore, there is no fear of causing the trouble that the registered data will be deleted automatically.

Further, in the present embodiment, the original parameter called the search frequency index is set to determine the frequency of data use, but the embodiment of the present invention is not limited to this embodiment. Needless to say. For example, depending on how you want to use your phone, you can
That is, it is conceivable to preferentially copy the data without the area code to the second storage area 5b, or to set other conditions that are considered to be related to the frequency of use, or to specify by the user. It is also possible to copy the created data. Further, in this embodiment, the storage area is set to 2
Although the description has been made by dividing into three, it is also possible to divide into three or more regions. In this case, as already explained,
A method of giving a search priority to the storage areas may be applied, or a plurality of storage areas corresponding to the second storage area 5b described above may be set so that the user can arbitrarily select. Of course, each storage area is registered / registered via a digital signal such as a magnetic disk, not a memory element.
It may be provided in another searchable storage medium.

Furthermore, by providing the second storage area 5b in an external storage device, for example, an IC card, a personal telephone directory for each user can be easily realized. However, in this case, it is not desirable that the data in the second storage area 5b is automatically deleted as described in the step, and unless the user performs a specific operation, the second storage area 5b is not deleted. It is rather desirable that data deletion be prohibited unless a special setting is made to the external storage device by a switch or the like before the external storage device is connected to the telephone body.

Furthermore, if such an IC card is provided with numeric keys, so-called 10 keys, and the appearance as if it were a calculator, it is possible to input data by operating the 10 keys without using the telephone body. When exchanging business cards on the go, you can immediately register the other party's telephone number. Furthermore, if a search means and a display means are provided on the same IC card so that registered data can be searched and displayed, even if the telephone set used on the go is not compatible with the IC card, it can be used as a telephone directory. Can be used for In this case, the search is the second storage area 5b.
It is considered that there is generally no need to be aware of a plurality of storage areas, since it is intended only for this purpose.

It is also possible to set a password in the external storage device, if necessary. An example of this is
A certain area of the second storage area 5b provided in the external storage device, for example, a few bits from the address where the address takes the minimum value is determined as the password area, and the password arbitrarily set by the user is stored here. be able to. When the external storage device is set in the main body of the telephone, the calculating means provided in the main body of the telephone automatically accesses the password area to read out the password, and then the operation is temporarily suspended. In this state, when data other than the default value, for example, "0000", is read from the password area, only the reading of data from the second storage area 5b is prohibited by the calculation means. At this time,
The read data is, of course, not displayed outside. After that, only when the user inputs a password that exactly matches the read data, the second storage area 5
Reading of data from b is permitted. The above operation can be considered as an example.

[0022]

According to the present invention, the following effects can be obtained based on the above configuration. First, since frequently used data is selectively stored in the second storage area having a small capacity, it is often sufficient to search only the second storage area having a small capacity. This shortens the search time.

Secondly, since the frequency of the search for the first storage area is relatively lower than that of the conventional structure, the data in the search target area may be erased due to a malfunction at the time of the search. The risk of encountering the first storage area is low. For this reason, the risk of erasing infrequently used data, which the user particularly memorizes, is relatively reduced as compared with the conventional configuration. Even if a problem occurs in which the data in the second storage area is erased, the same data as the erased data remains in the first storage area and backup is possible with the configuration of the embodiment already described. is there.

Thirdly, since various forms are used for the second storage area, as already described, various uses are possible depending on the form. In particular, since frequently used data is selectively stored in the second storage area, the advantage that this second storage area can be used independently even after being separated from the telephone body is very large.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flow chart showing an outline of a configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing a process of registering data.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing a data transfer process between storage areas.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing an empty area creation process.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing a process of searching for data.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 10 key 5a first storage area 5b second storage area

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A telephone directory having storage means for storing telephone numbers and capable of searching the telephone numbers stored in the storage means, wherein the storage means for storing the telephone numbers has a plurality of storage areas. An electronic telephone directory that has the following items and is capable of performing a search targeting an arbitrary region of the storage region. 2. The electronic telephone directory according to claim 1, wherein:
An electronic telephone directory, wherein stored telephone numbers can be transferred from one area to the other area.