Help with RegEx

Question

Hi Alteryx Community,

I am trying to do Challenge #300 of the Alteryx Challenge (Challenge #300: Where is the party? - Alteryx Community)

I did not know how to parse text so I looked at the solution, but I am struggling to understand the RegEx parse analysis.

Country ISO codes and country names are put together in a string (Screenshot 1).

To separate the first 2 capital letters from the rest of the text the solution uses the following RegEx code: (\u{2})(.*)

Could someone help me understand what does \u mean?

Also, I found a lot RegEx documentation online and apparently there are different types of RegEx. Is Alteryx's RegEx python- or java-based? Where can I find documentation to learn more about RegEx for Alteryx?

Thank you!

Screenshot 1:

Challenge 300_Solution File.yxzp

KrishnaChithrathil · Accepted Answer

@selsset97

\u means the uppercase letter.

(\u{2}) - this would give you two Uppercase letters in that column.

KAkuffo · Accepted Answer

hi @selsset97

I would recommend the tooll mastery series here is the REg ex tool mastery article:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-RegEx/ta-p/37689

\u stands for up[[[er case letter

In order to pull out the first two characters you could alwys use Left function inthe formula tool for a less complicated approach.

davidskaife · Accepted Answer

Hi @selsset97

The \u simply means Upper case character. On the Regex Parse tool the + sign has a drop down which provides details on the basic regex functionality available which can help.

A lot of people recommend using https://regex101.com/ to help as well while learning and testing your regex expressions as well.

davidskaife · Accepted Answer

Alteryx uses Perl Regular Expression Syntax, so PCRE2 should work fine (at least it's what i've always left it on when i needed to use the website :)  )