REGEX, Match Acronym

[hellyars]

Here is my sample string.  It is a sample Title or Name of something.  I want to find all Titles that contain EW and only the two digit acronym EW.  I plan to use it in a IF statement.   IF (Contains([Title], 'EW' 0) THEN 1 ELSE 0 ENDIF.  The Contains expression does not work because it picks up anything that contains an "ew" match.  But, I am having trouble coming up with the REGEX expression to capture only the 2-digit EW acronym and only the 2-digit acronym.  Help.

SEW or EW or a New Thing

if (Contains([Title], 'TACO',0)) then 1 elseif REGEX_Match([Title], '.*(\bEW)\b.*$') then 1 else 0 endif. ....I think this works??

[hellyars]

I should clarify - because I asked a similar question before.

Contains([Description],"EW",0)  works but picks up anything with EW in it.  In the sample title above, this expression picks up both SEW and EW.

[danilang · Accepted solution]

Hi @hellyars 

Here's a regex expression that matches your criteria

(^EW .*|.* EW$|.* EW .*|^EW$)

It's got 4 parts

^EW .* matches anything that starts with "EW" and is followed by a space

.* EW$ matches anything that ends with "EW" and is preceded by a space

.* EW .* matches anything that is "space EW space"

^EW$ matches anything that is "EW" on its own

The pipes specify that you should perform a logical OR 

Results

Dan

[Thableaus · Accepted solution]

Hi @hellyars 

@danilang solution is actually cool, but there is a very useful concept in RegEX that is called "word boundary". It's represented by "\b".

This actually prevents you from going into these tricky traps.

So, the match would work this way:

REGEX_MATCH([Field1], ".*?\bEW\b.*")

Cheers,

[danilang]

Thanks @Thableaus.  Much more elegant. 

And now I know something else about Regex.  It's convenient that "\b" works at the beginning and ending of lines as well.

Dan

[Thableaus]

Yes @danilang "\b" is what is called a positional match, such as "^" and "$".

It doesn't actually represent a character, just a position in your pattern. And that position is filled either with non-word characters or no characters at all.

Cheers,

[papalow]

@Thableaus 

Thanks for sharing this tip.  This is great!

[papalow]

@amitkellawan 

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