CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvbaexcel
sigil
sigil

Reputation: 9546

What's a simpler way to get this array of regex matches?

I have a string starting with some asterisk-bounded substrings, e.g.,

*AB**XY**DZ*There is more text

I want to get an array of all these substrings; in this case the array would be as follows:

[1] AB
[2] XY
[3] DZ

The following strings should not return any matches:

There is *AB**XY**DZ* more text
There is more text *AB**XY**DZ*

I've implemented this by capturing the whole asterisk-bounded group at the beginning with regex, then processing that result to get the substrings, as follows:

Public Function getCodeArray(commentString As String) As Variant

Dim codeString As String
Dim mCol As MatchCollection
Dim regex As RegExp
Dim delimiter As String

Set regex = New RegExp
regex.Pattern = "^([*][A-Za-z]{2}[*])+"
delimiter = "|"
Set mCol = regex.Execute(commentString)
codeString = mCol(0).Value    
codeString = Replace(codeString, "**", delimiter)
codeString = Replace("*", "")
getCodeArray = Split(codeString, delimiter)

End Function

Is there a way that I can set up the regex so that I can directly return the 2-letter substrings as mCol's matches and not have to use replace() and split()?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 506

Answers (1)

Slai
Slai

Reputation: 22876

Simplest is to Split by "*" and get the odd elements of the result:

s = "There is *AB**XY**DZ* more text"
a = Split(s, "*")

For i = 1 To UBound(a) Step 2
    Debug.Print a(i)
Next

Other options can be to experiment with negative and positive lookahead https://regex101.com/r/ZbEb4U/1 or match the *s too https://regex101.com/r/ZbEb4U/2

Upvotes: 2

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