Using a Field as the Pattern within a REGEX_Match Formula Is Giving Inconsistent Results

[taxtechfl]

Rather than hard-coding the pattern in the REGEX_Match formula I am using the values from a field for the pattern.  In some cases the results are as expected, but in other cases it doesn't show a match when it should.

If I take the pattern value from the masking field ([RegEx Expression]) and hard-code the string in the REGEX_Match formula, it gives the right result.  I have provided a sample workflow to demonstrate the issue.

In the example WF the field [VAT Reg ID] is being checked to see if it matches the Regular Expression in the [RegEx Expression] field.  For RecordID 3 since it failed the match, I used formulas to hard-code the pattern both with and without the ^ and $ and matches occurred with the manual hard-coded patterns.

I also stripped the ^ and $ characters from the masking field in a separate test, but the result using the field instead of hard-coded pattern still failed (that test is not included in the sample WF, however).

Is there another way to approach this to test a pattern match for a list of patterns from a file or is there something I can do to get this to produce the correct results in all cases?  Thank you for any assistance with this.

[SPetrie · Accepted solution]

Try it without the single quotes around your expressions in the Regex Expression column.

[taxtechfl]

Thank you, @SPetrie .  That worked.  Since the formula requires the single quotes in it when hard-coding the pattern, I incorrectly assumed they had to be present in the value passed as the pattern.  Once I removed the single quotes from the value in the field, all results are now consistent and correct.