Searching a String using regexp

ASDF=

   Manager_Mark
       NumOfAxes: 2
       PoductVal: 142
       VerifyBy : 'Mark'
   John
       FilesServed: 142
       ClearedFile: 128
       PendingFile: 14
   Mark
       FilesServed: 124
       ClearedFile: 124
       PendingFile: 0

ASDF is my charecter array with details. and all my details will be in this format.. The things which would be changing are "Manager_mark" , "John" and "Mark" .

I just need to find these three Strings within the data using regexp . I cannot use strfind as these three values gets randomly updated.. I tried using regexp but couldn't do so.. Can anyone tell me the effecient way (or) the expression needed to search the three values within this character array

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

ASDF is a cell array or what?

[Aryan Sinha]

Its a charecter array

[Walter Roberson]

You have not defined your requirements well enough. Suppose, for example, that you get an employee whose name is "FilesServed" or "Manager_Mark" .

Why are you not just extracting rows 1 and 5:4:end ?

[Aryan Sinha]

The fields (Manager_Mark , John ,Mark ) are randomly updated.. and When these fields changes , the properties associated with them also changes and vary in length ..

Like check in this case

ASDF=
   Manager_Reza
       NumOfAxes: 2
       PoductVal: 142
       VerifyBy : 'Reza'
       VerifyOn : 'Dec-21'
   Danny
       FilesServed: 10
       ClearedFile: 10
       PendingFile: 0
   Timothy
       FilesServed: 129
       ClearedFile: 12
       PendingFile: 0

In this case , I need to find the three words

1)Manager_reza 2)Danny 3)Timothy

I can find all the properties associated using regexp

regexp(ASDF,'(\w*):','tokens')

But not sure how to find these three words,, (i mean by expression)

[Walter Roberson]

And when you get an employee named "Danny:", what then?

[Aryan Sinha]

I need to group the properties..I mean ,. Danny and his associated properties

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

And how are you going to distinguish between an employee named "Danny:" (including the colon) and a property value prefixed by "Danny:" ?

I would put it to you that employee names and manager_ entries are prefixed with a certain number of blanks, and that properties for each employee or manager_ entry are prefixed with a different and larger number of blanks.

Assuming your char array has embedded newline to divide it into lines:

ASDF = strjoin( {
'   Manager_Reza'
'       NumOfAxes: 2'
'       PoductVal: 142'
'       VerifyBy : ''Reza'''
'       VerifyOn : ''Dec-21'''
'   Danny'
'       FilesServed: 10'
'       ClearedFile: 10'
'       PendingFile: 0'
'   Timothy'
'       FilesServed: 129'
'       ClearedFile: 12'
'       PendingFile: 0'}.', char(10));

regexp(ASDF, '(?<=^\s{3})(\S+)', 'match', 'lineanchors')

If instead your char array is a 13 x something char array, blank padded, then to use regexp() on it you would need to cellstr() it, as regexp cannot be used on a 2D char array.

[Aryan Sinha]

Thanks.. it did really worked out on my large Dataset.... I am trying to check the expression you wrote .. Thanks a ton :)

[Aryan Sinha]

Hello Mr.Walter Roberson If the field has a white space then would it work ?

=Example : " Manager Reza " instead of Manager_Reza ??

I am trying to figure out the expression which you wrote and tweak it to make it work if the field has spaces...

[Walter Roberson]

 regexp(ASDF, '(?<=^\s{3})(.+)', 'match', 'lineanchors', 'dotexceptnewline')