@eaglepath
hope this helps
REGEX_Replace([Ops], "^(([^-]+-){"+TOSTRING([Position]-1)+"})([^-]+).*", "$3")
[Ops]:
This is the input string on which the regular expression will be applied.
"^(([^-]+-){"+TOSTRING([Position]-1)+"})([^-]+).*":
This is the regular expression pattern that the function uses to match portions of the input string.
Let's break down this regular expression:
"^": Matches the start of the string.
"(([^-]+-){"+TOSTRING([Position]-1)+"})":
"[^-]+": Matches any sequence of characters that does not include a hyphen (-).
"[^-]+-": Matches a sequence of characters followed by a hyphen.
"{"+TOSTRING([Position]-1)+"}": The TOSTRING([Position]-1) dynamically calculates a number based on the Position field minus 1. This number dictates how many occurrences of the preceding pattern ([^-]+-) to match. The result is the first N-1 segments before the hyphen.
"([^-]+)": Captures the segment immediately following the N-1 segments of hyphen-separated values. This is the part of the string you're interested in.
".*": Matches the rest of the string, but it's not captured because we are only interested in the previous capturing group.
"$3":
This indicates what the replacement string should be. The $3 refers to the third captured group in the regular expression.
In this pattern, $3 corresponds to ([^-]+), which is the N-th segment of the hyphen-separated values.
Example Walkthrough:
Suppose [Ops] is "A-B-C-D-E" and [Position] is 3.
"^(([^-]+-){"+TOSTRING([Position]-1)+"})":
TOSTRING([Position]-1) = 2, so this will match the first 2 hyphen-separated groups "A-B-".
"([^-]+)":
This will capture the next segment, which is "C".
".*":
This matches the rest of the string, "D-E", but this is not captured.
"$3":
The final output will be "C", which is the third segment in the hyphen-separated list.
Summary:
The REGEX_Replace function in your case is used to extract a specific segment from a hyphen-separated string based on the Position value. It finds the Position-th segment in the string and returns it as the result.
