But that library does not exist on Mac, so you either have to a. Find a Mac equivalent (probably shell out and use a command line utility - I have.
VBA or Visual Basic for Applications is a powerful programming tool in Microsoft Excel. Regular Expression class enables VBA programs to perform regular expression searches. The latter are text patterns that can help search for strings including email addresses, phone numbers and others with specific and defined criteria. In this intermediate level tutorial, we walk you through VBA RegEx. We assume that you have basic knowledge of VBA in Excel.
If not we recommend that you. You may also want to quickly.What is VBA Regex (Regular Expression)?A “regular expression” is an equation used to match a pattern. The most important uses include, string searching and replacement.
Regex is available in many programming languages which include, VBA, VB, VBscript, JavaScript, C#, VB.Net, Java, PHP etc. You could hop over and, with this course. QuantifiersQuantifiers are needed to match several characters. Here are a few of them.
PatternMeaningExample–Stands for a rangea-z means all the letters a to zStands for any one of the characters quotedabc means either a, b or c.A-Z means either A, B, ZUsed for grouping purposes Meaning is ‘or’X Y, means X or Y+Matches the character one or more timeszo+ matches ‘zoo’, but not ‘z’.Matches the character zero or more times“lo.” matches either “l” or “loo”?Matches the character zero or once“b?ve?” matches the “ve” in “never”. Special CharactersRegex covers a lot of special characters. We look at some of the commonly used ones. Special CharactersMeaning.Matches any single character$Matches the end of the inputnMatches the newline character^Matches the beginning of the inputtMatches the tab characterdMatches a digit in the range 0 to 9DMatches a non-digital characterwMatches any alphanumeric character including “”WMatches any non-alphanumeric charactersMatches any white space characters including tab, space, newline, form feedSMatches any non-white space characterrMatches a carriage return character; enter keyIf you want to match special characters. For example “.”, “”vTo find the vertical tab. Character ClassesCharacters can be grouped by putting them inside square brackets.
PatternMeaningxyzMatch the character x,y or z.a-zMatch any of the characters between a and z.^abc,^0-9A “^” caret at the beginning denotes “not.” Here the characters other than a,b,c is matched.+.?For your information most special characters have no meaning inside the square brackets. This particular expression matches any of the special characters within the square brackets.Are regex cases case sensitive? The answer is “yes” and “no”. It all depends on the way you write the regex code and call them in your programs. The Limitations of Regular ExpressionCertain patterns in a string cannot be matched by regular expressions.
Here is an example that counts the number of occurrences of a pattern. The pattern is “a nb n“. Here the characters “a” and “b” are both repeated n times.
The reason being regular expressions cannot keep track of the number of occurrences.Where is a large amount of data to process it’s wise to avoid RegEx. The reason is, if you do not use the RegEx pattern properly, it can lead to low efficiency of the program. Accessing VBA RegExp ObjectOpen your Microsoft Excel application. Click on Developer tab. From here you choose Visual Basic.From the visual Basic menu bar, choose Insert - Module.After the module opens a new sheet, go to Tool tab and select References.
Here you get a list of items with check boxes. Search for VBscript Regular expressions. Check the corresponding checkboxes.Regular expressions have three RegExp Methods and four RegExp Properties. Let’s take a look at each of them: RegExp Methods.
Execute method– In this method, a match or matches of pattern from a string is extracted. Replace method– Here the character or string is searched, and once found it is replaced with a new character or string. Test- This method is used to find whether a Regex pattern is matched in a given string.
The method returns either “True” or “False.” Test method is equivalent to testing whether the number of matches found is greater than 0.Properties of RegExp Method. Pattern– It can be a single character or a string of characters. You can go through the patterns mentioned in the above tables and use them in your programs as per your requirements. Global– The argument for this property is either “True” or “False.” It is “False” by default.If you set the parameter to “True” it finds all the matches in a string. However, if by default it will only check for the first match. IgnoreCase– This parameter accepts either “True” or “False.” By default it is set to “False” and it is case sensitive.
If you want the search to ignore the case, then set the value to “True”. MultiLine- This parameter accepts either “True” or “False.” If the value is set to true, it will search each line of a multiline string. While the “False” searches only the current line.Let’s use the properties listed above in a sample program Example 1: VBA program to test whether the string is a valid email address Sub RegExTester Set objRegExp1 = CreateObject('vbscript.regexp') objRegExp1.Global = true objRegExp1.IgnoreCase=true objRegExp1.Pattern=a-z,A-Z.@a-z,A-Z.com. StrToSearch='[email protected]' Set regExpMatches = objRegExp1.Execute(strToSearch) If regExpMatches.Count = 1 MsgBox('This string is a valid email address.' ) End if End SubIn this program, we declared sub SubroutineRegExTester.Set objRegExp1 = CreateObject(“vbscript.regexp”), this statement creates the regular expression object from VBScript. The object has functions which perform regular expression searches.
If you want the regular expression to match the string, just for the further occurrence of the string set, “objRegExp1.Global = true.” If you want to match for all occurrences of the string set “objRegExp.Global = false.” If you want your regular expression to ignore the case of string, set “objRegExp1.IgnoreCase=true” If case is important set this property to false.”objRegExp1.Pattern=a-z,A-Z.@a-z,A-Z.com” this pattern denotes the string with alphabetical characters before and after @ symbol. If the regular expression object match the text in your input string set “regExpMatches.Count=1”Here is another VBA RegEx Method program which finds and replaces string. Let’s take a look.