Howdy, Tried searching the boards for a similar issue and don't see one that is similar to this. Hoping someone can assist as I'm a Regex newbie. I basically have a bunch of support documents that have a identification code up front followed by the name of the support. These codes can vary in length and the characters that follow the digits can also vary. Here's a rough example: File naming conventionsWhat I need to pull3340-Balances-202012043340700132099 SupportPackage7001320998129005_12-04-2020 Module812900532603260CashValues32603260 All I'm after are the codes at the front. I'm having a heck of a time with this as my trusty ol' text to columns doesn't seem to work super well when the delimiter can be an underscore, space, hyphen, or not exist at all. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance, friends!

Regex to pull leading numbers with varying lengths and delimiters?

Howdy,

Tried searching the boards for a similar issue and don't see one that is similar to this. Hoping someone can assist as I'm a Regex newbie.

I basically have a bunch of support documents that have a identification code up front followed by the name of the support. These codes can vary in length and the characters that follow the digits can also vary. Here's a rough example:

File naming conventions	What I need to pull
3340-Balances-20201204	3340
700132099 SupportPackage	700132099
8129005_12-04-2020 Module	8129005
32603260CashValues	32603260

All I'm after are the codes at the front. I'm having a heck of a time with this as my trusty ol' text to columns doesn't seem to work super well when the delimiter can be an underscore, space, hyphen, or not exist at all. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance, friends!

Regex

Accepted answers

Qiu

@TGow
How about this one?

treepruner

I think (\d+) which looks for any amount of digits in the front of the field and puts it into a new column will do what you need:

This RegEx editor site

is really helpful with POSIX regex syntax.

Sarah

MarqueeCrew

Here's a quick formula:

regex_replace([field],"(\d+)\D.*","$1")

starting numbers get caught.

cheers,

mark

All comments

Qiu

@TGow
How about this one?

treepruner

I think (\d+) which looks for any amount of digits in the front of the field and puts it into a new column will do what you need:

This RegEx editor site

is really helpful with POSIX regex syntax.

Sarah

MarqueeCrew

Here's a quick formula:

regex_replace([field],"(\d+)\D.*","$1")

starting numbers get caught.

cheers,

mark

TGow

Hi all, these all look like they'll work!

Thank you Qui and treepruner for the regex tool examples, it looks like the solution is fairly simple! I definitely need to spend some time learning this a bit more. In that vein, thank you for the link treepruner. I will give it a look!

Thank you for the formula MarqueeCrew. I knew the formula tool can do a lot of Regex magic but have never given it a shot. I'll definitely look at ways to try and integrate these in my workflows once I have a better handle on the subject.

I appreciate you all taking the time to assist 😀

mithily

here is my solution sans googling

challenge_316_start_file_mili.yxmd

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