Is there a way to narrow down string searches to specfics integers/characters?

I have a program that reads files and organizes them into structures. Unfortunately some of the files are not being read correctly because of the search. Here is an example on what string it searches for

Keyword = 'SLGN ';
Indices = strfind(Text, Keyword);

Instead I want to search for

Keyword = 'SLGN X,'

X being any integer or word. What I really want is that comma that is at the end of the phrase. Simply having SLGN with a space after it causes problems for some of the files since I'm trying to parse the lists rather than the paragraphs.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You do not speak about how you are doing the search. You can do that kind of matching with regexp()

Keyword = 'SLGN \w+,'
regexp(WhatYouAreSearching, Keyword)

you might want to add 'match' as an option, depending what you want to do with the result of the match.

[Sancheet Hoque]

Thank you, this actually solved many of the reading problems!

[Sancheet Hoque]

It there a way to further make it read only lists because SLGN \w+ works but I want it to read SLGN X, somephrase, somephrase, etc. Not Prior to SLGN X, it did not work.

[Walter Roberson]

Keyword = 'SLGN\s+(\w+\s*,\s*)+(\w+)?'

This would match lists which had at least one comma, with it being allowed to have any number of blanks before or after the comma, and will match the final word as well if there is one.

If there is a part that has blank inside a phrase then it will match the first word and then stop.

If there is not at least one term with a comma after it, nothing will be matched. This is by design as your description appears to require the comma for the portion to be valid.

Question: did you want to match SLGN when it is the first non-whitespace on a line and match to the end of line? Or perhaps lines that start with SLGN provided there is at least one comma on the line but you are not concerned about strict word comma word comma order and you want to match to end of line? That is much easier, really:

'^\s*SLGN.*,.*$' and add the options 'dotexceptnewline', 'lineanchors'

[Sancheet Hoque]

SLGN 741, MADE, T5, FHS7, (FR5673W, FR8345), LAGOR (is something I want to read)

SLGN 741, but prior to expectation it did not work (Something I want to ignore)

 I tried the Keyword = 'SLGN\s+(\w+\s*,\s*)+(\w+)?' and it still read the bottom phrase.

[Walter Roberson]

Sorry I do not understand what you mean by "expectation" here?

[Sancheet Hoque]

Oh that's just part of the file that is being read.

""SLGN 741, MADE, T5, FHS7, (FR5673W, FR8345), LAGOR""

""SLGN 741, but prior to expectation it did not work ""

The two phrases above are just part of the file. I posted a portion to show you what I want the program to find. The top phrase is what I want my code to read and the bottom phrase is what I want my code to ignore My code searches for SLGN, so both phrases are read, but I only want lists with commas read.

[Walter Roberson]

Keyword = 'SLGN\s+(\S+\s*,\s*)+\S+\s*$'

and add the option 'lineanchors'

This requires at least one comma and permits spaces before and after commas and permits the items to include any character except white space because the "(" followed by a word is required to match and so is word followed immediately by ")". So what it does not allow is if there is no comma or if there is a multiple word phrase between commas or a comma is the last non blank on the line.