CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Thomas
Thomas

Reputation: 723

How to extract first name using regex?

My input string looks like this: 

Employee: Joe Banana
Department: Sales 
Location: New York

Bla bla bla

Note:

even more bla

This regex does the trick extracting the full name, i.e. Joe Banana

(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Employee): .*\s(.*)$(?-m)(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Note):$(?-m)(?s).*

However this doesn't work for first name, but extract Department instead:

(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Employee): (.*)\s.*$(?-m)(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Note):$(?-m)(?s).*

Why don't these regex extract the first name and the last name?

I need to keep searching for those groups as we need to stop searching after Note:

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1449

Answers (4)

Yoko Ishioka
Yoko Ishioka

Reputation: 161

If you use this, the first capture group will be the first name and the second one will be the last name:

Employee:\s+(\w+)\s+(\w+)

Upvotes: 0

Thomas
Thomas

Reputation: 723

I came up with this

FIRSTNAME

(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Employee): (.*?)\s.*$(?-m)(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Note):$(?-m)(?s).*

LASTNAME

(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Employee): .*?\s(.*)$(?-m)(?s).*(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Note):$(?-m)(?s).*

Upvotes: 0

Jan
Jan

Reputation: 43169

Here you go:

Employee:\s*(?P<employee>.+)[\n\r]
Department:\s*(?P<department>.+)

See a demo on regex101.com (and mind the different modifiers!)

Upvotes: 2

baddger964
baddger964

Reputation: 1227

Try this one, the first match group is the first name the second match group is the last name :

(?m)^Employee:\s+(w+)\s+(w+)

or replace (.*) by (w+)\s+(w+) in your regex :

(?s).(?-s)(?m)^\s(Employee): .\s(w+)\s+(w+)$(?-m)(?s).(?-s)(?m)^\s*(Note):$(?-m)(?s).*

Upvotes: 1

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