vbscript Regex question here... 

I have a string that will/should contain either a 5 digit number "12345" or a record number that will be something like "ABC_E00012345", separated by whitespace character
I would like to match each individual instance of the 2 possibilities above.

Example String:  12345 ABC_E12345 54321 98765 ABC_E98765 00 123 A

What I would like to match:
12345
ABC_E12345
54321
98765
ABC_E98765

What I would like to discard, or just not return:
00
123
A

The pattern I came up with is returning such things as 00 123 A, can anyone help?

objRegEx.Pattern = "[^\d{5}$]|^ABC_E000[\d{5}$]"

Also, if possible can someone give me the in a nutshell of when and where to use ^ or $ inside or outside bracket/paren

 

Thanks everyone! 

 

 

yfki:

vbscript Regex question here... 

I have a string that will/should contain either a 5 digit number "12345" or a record number that will be something like "ABC_E00012345", separated by whitespace character
I would like to match each individual instance of the 2 possibilities above.

Example String:  12345 ABC_E12345 54321 98765 ABC_E98765 00 123 A

What I would like to match:
12345
ABC_E12345
54321
98765
ABC_E98765

What I would like to discard, or just not return:
00
123
A

 You'll need to give more detail of what makes up a valid record number.

yfki:

The pattern I came up with is returning such things as 00 123 A, can anyone help?

objRegEx.Pattern = "[^\d{5}$]|^ABC_E000[\d{5}$]"

Also, if possible can someone give me the in a nutshell of when and where to use ^ or $ inside or outside bracket/paren

 

Thanks everyone! 

 

 

You are misusing the Character Class. http://regexadvice.com/blogs/mash/archive/2008/01/31/A-touch-of-Character-Class.aspx

---

Michael

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Albert Einstein

How about:

\b(\d{5}|[a-z]\S+)\b

with the 'ignore case' option set.

This assumes that the 'record number' is an alphabetic character followed by any number of non-space characters. If there is a set limit, or a valid number range, then change the "\S+" to the "\S{min,max}" form or modify it to whatever meets your requirement.

The '\b' placeholders are the trick here.

Also, I'm surprised that your pattern picks up anything from the test text you have supplied - even if you do change it to use character classes correctly. What I think you are trying to achieve with what you have written is going to force the number or 'record number' to be the only thing in the text: the '^' says to match only the very start of the text and the '$' says to match only the very end of the text (assuming the 'multiline' option is off). This means that it will not match anything in your example.

Susan