[Asterisk-Users] CallerID strings comprised of "%23..."

[Dave Grey]

Well, I am batting close to zero where responses to my questions are  
concerned, but I suppose I will just keep swinging.

I just set up an account with callpacket.com, and noticed that on  
incoming calls through this provider the values of CALLERID(name) and  
CALLERID(num) are "%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23" when the caller  
has either blocked callerid (tested with *67), or, apparently, sent  
values that are unexpected (tested via friend who is, for whatever  
reason, doing SetCallerID("caller 6398A" <>) on his outbound calls).

I have "speak caller ID" macro that does a system() call to a script  
on the local machine, and I have been tinkering with ways of handling  
the different possible strings in some reasonably intelligent way.   
My question is -- is %23 the escape for the # character here, as I  
suspect, and if so, is there a way I can tell asterisk to interpret  
it as such, or do I need to convert it back on my own?

Is the "%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23%23" (or "###########") any kind  
of an industry standard string, that evaluates to something sensible  
on a consumer CID display, or is it just some arbitrary barf that  
callpacket has chosen to send in those cases?

Thanks for any info.

lyd