Regex tool

Question

Could anyone help me explain the expression highlighted above? I'm trying to understand what this expression means and how to build it from scratch. I know that the expression helped extract out the string after the last comma. However, i was not able wrap my mind around how to understand every single dot and the (). Is there a good source for me to learn how to write this expression by myself as I found Regex is pretty helpful? Thanks in advance.

afv2688 · Accepted Answer

Hello @Wynn ,

The dot means any sigle character, in other words, doesn't matter what it is, special character, space, lettter etc. The wild card associated indicates the amount (zero or more characters). Another example would be the plus symbol "+" which indicates 'one or more'.

The parenthesis are key characters that indicate a group.

So what you are looking there is for the last group of characters after the last comma (it is always by default the last).

You wan to parse it ant take it.

I would recommend you checking this:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-RegEx/ta-p/37689

Read it and practice, a lot!

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Regards

Jonathan-Sherman · Accepted Answer

Hi @Wynn,

So a great place to start learning Regex would be https://regexone.com/

For your expression .*,(.*)

Parenthesis (brackets) will "extract" or "parse" out the piece of text that matches your expression which is why you've created a new column. The first part .*. is saying look at anything up until the last comma (as the .* is what we would call greedy). Therefore your expression is parsing out everything after the last comma

If this solves your issue please mark the answer as correct, if not let me know!

Regards,

Jonathan