RegEx Parse Entire Digits from String

[karenewilkins]

After an incredible class at Inspire 2024 (with Albert Bellamy), I was sure I could figure out an issue I'm having with a RegEx expression. I was wrong. Maybe someone could assist.

I have a project where I'm trying to parse the digits from records in a flat file. I want the first set of digits (could range from 5 digits to 16), after the "0". However, I don't want to parse those that don't have a 3 character non-digit in the string.

For example (attached), I have the below records:

I want to extract the highlighted digits, but not the "00000000" in record 3. As you can see there are three characters in the first 2 records after the digits I want ("FFM","ADJ") - possibly use that to identify the digits I want?

Basically I want the parsed records to look like this:

The expression I'm using is "^(0)(\d{4,16})\s\s+(.+)". It gets me what I want, except it's parsing the "00000000" into the first column of my parsed records.

Thoughts?

[flying008]

Hi, @karenewilkins 

Match by :

^(0\d{4,16})(?=\s+[A-Z]).*

Replace to $1 :

^(0\d{4,16})(?=\s+[A-Z])

[binuacs · Accepted solution]

@karenewilkins Another regex

[karenewilkins]

@binuacs & @flying008  - thank you so much.

I opted for "^(0\d{4,16})(?=\s+[A-Z])(.*)$", as the three characters could be a combination of other letters other than FFM and ADJ.

This works perfectly!