Find Pattern

Search text for the first match of a pattern.

Input Fields

• look in is the text you want to search inside.
• look for is the text you want to search for and/or pattern to match. Patterns must follow a standard pattern format called a regular expression (see details below).

Output Fields

• position is the position where the first match begins, where 0 denotes the very beginning. Returns -1 if there is no match.

Pattern Options

Unlike the Find function, Find Pattern also supports regular expressions. Examples of regular expressions include:

• \w - finds any alphanumeric character (e.g. a letter or number)
• \s - finds any whitespace character (e.g. a blank or tab)
• \d - finds any digit
• [1-5] - finds a number between 1 and 5
• [aeiou] - finds a, e, i, o, or u
• hello|test - finds “hello” or “test”
• colou?r - finds “color” or “colour” (the ? signifies that there can be zero or one of the preceding element)
• \d{5} - finds five consecutive digits (the {number} signifies a number of consecutive instances of the preceding element)
• [^\w] - finds any character that is not an alphanumeric character. You can add the not operator ^ before any other pattern, e.g. [^a] to find anything other than a or [^\d{3}] to find anything that is not 3 digits in a row

Many characters have special meaning in regular expressions, such as ., +, *, \ and more. To search for any of those characters you need to place a \ before the character. For instance: * \. - finds a period

You can combine any of the above patterns and fixed text. For instance: * test\.\d{3} - finds the word “test” followed by a period followed by 3 consecutive digits

Examples:

For simple searches, Find Pattern works the same as Find.

If look in testing_123:

• look for test -> position 0 (found at very beginning)
  
• look for ing -> position 4 (4 means it comes after the 4th, starts in the 5th position)
  
• look for hello -> position -1 (no match found)
  
• look for \d -> position 8 (first digit)
  
• look for \w_\d -> position 6 (any character then underline then any digit)
  
• look for esting_\d{3} -> position 1 (“esting_” followed by any 3 digits)

Find Pattern is often used in combination with Text Segment to get the text that matched the pattern.