Match string pattern

[guangdew1]

I'm looking for a solution to extract a date from a string. The form of the string is uncertain, but the date is always dd/mm/yy and it is not in the beginning or end of the string. I know the Scan From String should be the way to go, but whatever way I try, it will give me an error.

Could someone give me some help, thanks in advance.

[Omar_II · Accepted solution]

[Mark_Yedinak]

Or you can try these alternatives

[guangdew1]

Hi Omar II,

Thank you so much for your simple and clean solution, this is exactly what I wanted. I thought it should be simple, but I just don't know how to do it.

Best regards,

[Omar_II]

Match Regular Expression is powerful tool. Read up on it! Regular Expression

Mark Y. shows how to pull out the month day year as sub-matches located between ( ).

You drag the bottom of the Match Regular Expression node down to add sub-match outputs.

[guangdew1]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for your help. The first solution worked but I couldn't make the second one work. I believe I typed in correctly,

like this: ([0-9]{4,4})\.([0-9]{2,2})\.([0-9]{2,2})

Maybe you can explain a little about how it works so I and other people can learn something.

Best regards,

[guangdew1]

Hi Omar II,

Thank you again for your help. The link is very helpful and I will try to get more into this regular expression subject.

Best regards,

[Omar_II]

The {4,4} forces it to match a 4 digit string made up of the digits [0-9]. Maybe looking for a 4 digit year.

I think it would match something like 2011.03.11

[Mark_Yedinak]

---

@Omar II wrote:

The {4,4} forces it to match a 4 digit string made up of the digits [0-9]. Maybe looking for a 4 digit year.

I think it would match something like 2011.03.11

---

Yes, this is what the second example is mathcing. That was an example I posted a while back and I didn't look too closely at it to see that is expecting the year first. As Omar mentioned, the {m,n} notation specifies the minimum and maximum length for the previous pattern. The {4,4} indicates it must be exactly 4 patterms in length. Something like {2,4} would match a pattern length of 2, 3 or 4. The expression {2,} would match a pattern length of 2 or more.

[guangdew1]

Hi Mark,

Thank you again for the help. I checked and it worked well with this date format. And it even worked when it mixed with other numbers and without space.

Best regards,