Grab string within brackets

[SylviaK]

Hi 

I am trying to grab a string within brackets using Reg Ex. The output should be as below. 

Field	Output
adfsdfsfaw reg asdfsdfas dsdfsdf (regulation x)	regulation x
asdf33 sdfsd cc (regulation yy)	regulation yy
asdfsdf erer reg sdfsd
sdfs werwewrwer (regulation ttt)	regulation ttt

I found the below solution and it works - can someone pls explain why though? How do I read this?

(.*)(?:\()(.*)(?:\))

I would have gone for (reg.*) as a regular expression. but that doesn't work. 

[Drussek · Accepted solution]

Much simpler regex, and the same output:

\((.*)\)

[Cndro_Consulting]

I think you should follow this @SylviaK 

[seven · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I enjoy using RegEx. One of the many problems with RegEx can be incomprehensibility. If I can, I use Alteryx string functions as they are easier for others to understand.

Substring(Substring([Field], FindString([Field], '(') + 1),0,FindString(Substring([Field], FindString([Field], '(') + 1), ')'))

Something like this would do the same job. It locates the positions of the parentheses and grabs the text between them. Even though it is nested, it only takes a few minutes to unwind what is happening here.

[echuong1]

As with everything in Designer, there are multiple ways to get to the same output.

In your case, (reg.*) does not work because the first line has a standalone "reg" value. The expression you wrote is looking for "reg" in any instance. Adding the ".*" means it can have 0 or more of any character.

If you wanted to include the "reg" portion in your regex statement, you could use (reg\w.*)\). The statement is looking for something that begins with "reg" followed by another letter. This will disregard the standalone "reg" value. Following, is anything else (represented by .*). The closing ")" is removed by having it outside of the market group. The ")" is a special character that needs to be signified by a "\" prior. 

A more simple expression might be to just look for anything in the parenthesis, if you don't just need to find values that start with "reg." \((.*)\) will work in that case.