Filter String Text

Question

Hello guys,

So I know it's complicated but I would appreciate any insights that any of you can provide.

So, I have such strings which I need to filter the number of grams that an item have.

For example from the string QUAKER OAT COOKIES HONEY NUT 9G   =>  I would like to replace the text with just the integer "9".

Some strings don't include any grams count   =>  so it's fine to drop down.

Thank you in advance.

SeanAdams · Answer

hey @sfh22

The best way to do this kind of text parsing is with the regEx tool.   You will need to learn the language of regular expressions, but this is well worth doing because it's a key skill in data parsing.

In your particular case - the regular expression to use is .*?(\d+)G

Breaking this down:

*  . means any character
* .* means any character repeated
* \d+ means a group of digits (plus is similar to * - star is "zero or more repeats" and plus is "1 or more repeats"
* the brackets, in this way of using them, tells alteryx to keep the numbers

So this regex says "give me any series of 1 or more numbers which is followed by G and is at the end of a piece of text.    I've attached an Alteryx flow to this post

Resources:

* I find http://regex101.com very helpful to get the actual regex syntax right - it can be tricky.   
* Training here: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Interactive-Lessons/tkb-p/interactive-lessons/label-name/Parsing%20Data
* There is a ton of info on regex on the internet more broadly
* multiple weekly challenges that you can solve with regex if you want to practice https://community.alteryx.com/t5/*/bd-p/weeklychallenge

regex.yxmd

Emil_Kos · Answer

Hi @sfh22,

Maybe you can try a data cleansing tool and choose that you want to keep only numbers?

Data cleansing tool have functionalities that allow removing all letters from a string

https://help.alteryx.com/current/designer/data-cleansing-tool