RegEx - multiple "OR"

Haven't done much with RegEx lately, so it could be that I'm just being forgetful but I would like to achieve the following:

a - one possible value for the string I search for

b - another one

c - seqence of characters I want to return

d - another possible variation of c

Normally I would do it like

(a|b)(c|d) and return the second one. However Alteryx does not allow us to have multiple matches.

a|b(c|d) looks like it's either a or b(c|d) which would be incorrect

Also how do I make conditional checks, normally I would do:

(a|b)(?c) to get a, ac, b and bc

Regex

Accepted answers

Ned

You are probably thinking of RegEx tokenize. That mode is quite tricky. I wrote a blog post about it a little while back:

http://inspiringingenuity.net/2014/06/11/alteryx-regular-expression-tokenize/

Short answer is in that mode - you do want one marked group. It helps Alteryx know what part you want to keep and wht part you don't. You can rewrite your expression:

(a|b|c|d)

If the things are complicated inside and you need to group them to have the ORs work, then you need to put them in umarked groups:

((?:a)|(?:b)|(?:c)|(?:d))

All comments

MarqueeCrew

Have you tried:

(A|B) | (C|D)

I think that this will work for you.

Thanks,

Mark

dawid_nawrot

I can't remember why I got the error about only one group that can be returned? Can I find any info on that anywhere?

Ned

You are probably thinking of RegEx tokenize. That mode is quite tricky. I wrote a blog post about it a little while back:

http://inspiringingenuity.net/2014/06/11/alteryx-regular-expression-tokenize/

Short answer is in that mode - you do want one marked group. It helps Alteryx know what part you want to keep and wht part you don't. You can rewrite your expression:

(a|b|c|d)

If the things are complicated inside and you need to group them to have the ORs work, then you need to put them in umarked groups:

((?:a)|(?:b)|(?:c)|(?:d))

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