Remove all vowels from a string unless it is the first letter of a word.

[hellyars]

I want to remove all vowels from a string of words :  a, e, i, o, u, y.  UNLESS its the first letter of a word.

Example:

Ground Control = Grnd Cntrl

Universal Control = Unvrsl Cntl

[randreag]

Hi @hellyars 

Here an example

I hope it helps

[AngelosPachis]

Hi @hellyars ,

You can use a RegEx replace function to achieve that. Just make sure that you add the 0 at the end to make it case sensitive

[AngelosPachis]

Any updates on this @hellyars ?

[hellyars]

@AngelosPachis  Oh sorry, I got caught up trying to figure out Alteryx's reporting systems.  It is so ...Windows.  

Anyways, this works great.  But, I discovered one flaw in my approach.  I need to ignore this in the event the vowel is the first letter of a word.  Can this be modified?

[MarqueeCrew · Accepted solution]

@hellyars ,

This FORMULA will eliminate non-1st letter Vowels.

REGEX_Replace([Field1], "\B[aeiouAEIOU]", '')

\B = non-word boundary (meaning, it isn't the first letter of a word).

[] = set of letters (lower or uppercase vowels)

Cheers,

Mark

[AngelosPachis]

Yes you can. I've broken down each string to individual words and then used a formula tool to check if the first letter of each word is lowercase. If it's a lowercase, then leave it untouched, else remove all vowel characters.

and the output:

Edit : Tested that and realised it's not working as I thought it would. Thankfully @MarqueeCrew stepped in to save the day

Let me know if that worked for you.

Cheers,

Angelos

[MarqueeCrew]

@AngelosPachis ,

 thanks for that mention! it definitely made me smile. I forgot where I first used word boundaries, but they definitely help. 

\b is worth learning. 

cheers,

 mark

[AngelosPachis]

@MarqueeCrew 

Definitely that's one to learn and something I wasn't aware it was even a thing. Is there a difference between a capitalized B or a lowercase one. So is \b and \B treated the same in RegEx?

Thanks for that hint, learned something new

Cheers,

Angelos

[MarqueeCrew]

@AngelosPachis ,

uppercase is the opposite(\d is a digit and \D is NOT a digit)

\b is a word boundary. 
\B is NOT a word boundary

 my expression looks for a vowel that isn't preceded by a boundary.  If you used a space instead of the boundary, the first word wouldn't work. The boundary makes it simple. 

cheers,

 mark