Using a wildcard to capture multiple items in a field

RCS

Hi alteryx community,

Im having an issue writing an if statement using wildards.

Lets say I have field entries with wave 1, wave 2, wave 3, wave etc.

If [Other] = "Wave*"

Then 1

Else 0

Endif

Im trying to use a wildcard or any other related function to capture anything that starts with "Wave" and end in a plethora of variable endings.

Workflow

Tips and Tricks

Accepted answers

NicoleJohnson

Could you use the formula Contains?

If Contains([Other],"Wave") Then 1 Else 0 Endif

...Alternatively, if Wave should always be the first word, you could use:

If Left([Other],4) = "Wave" Then 1 Else 0 Endif

... or play with RegEx!

RegEx_Match([Other],"Wave\s.*") <-- This should give you a 1 for a match without having to put it in an IF statement

Hopefully one of those does the trick!

All comments

NicoleJohnson

Could you use the formula Contains?

If Contains([Other],"Wave") Then 1 Else 0 Endif

...Alternatively, if Wave should always be the first word, you could use:

If Left([Other],4) = "Wave" Then 1 Else 0 Endif

... or play with RegEx!

RegEx_Match([Other],"Wave\s.*") <-- This should give you a 1 for a match without having to put it in an IF statement

Hopefully one of those does the trick!

RCS

thank you you are a superstar ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ★★★★★

RCS

thank you you are a superstar ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ★★★★★

@NicoleJohnson

Claje

I wanted to add on to Nicole's excellent answer by copying a post I made the other day regarding the "LIKE" keyword from languages like SQL, that I think can be helpful here.

In particular, the STARTSWITH() and ENDSWITH() functions are both really powerful and more flexible than LEFT([field],length,'searchstring') or RIGHT([field],length,'searchstring')

I'm going to use examples with a SQL syntax for comparison to give you all three versions of the "Like Operator" as I would recommend in Alteryx

LIKE 'abc-treatment%' (start of string):

STARTSWITH([field],'abc-treatment')

LIKE '%abc-treatment%' (any part of string):

CONTAINS([field],'abc-treatment')

LIKE '%abc-treatment' (end of string):

ENDSWITH([field],'abc-treatment')

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