How are regular expressions used?

For the import of unstructured requirements in Word or Excel, you can use regular expressions to assign object identifiers and property identifiers in the imported unstructured flat file. You specify these regular expressions in the flat file configuration files.

A regular expression, a set of characters that defines a pattern, is used for searching for specific lines of text containing the particular pattern. Regular expressions search for patterns on a single line and not for patterns that start on one line and end on another. You define these patterns in the flat file configuration files to identify the object's type for the identifier that matches the pattern.

To match strings when assigning identifiers in unstructured Word documents, you can create regular expressions by combining one or more wildcard characters supported in Word along with literal text. The regular expressions that you use for Excel files are similar but with some minor differences. For Excel files, you can use the same syntax for regular expressions that are used for regular expressions in Microsoft .NET Framework.

For more information about using regular expressions and the supported wildcard characters in Word, and for regular expressions used in .NET Framework, refer to Microsoft help.

With regular expressions, you can perform actions such as:

• Searching for words of a certain size.
• Searching for a word with four or more vowels that end with a specific letter, number, or a punctuation mark.
• Matching strings such as the strings "Handel", "Händel", and "Haendel". The regular expression H(ä|ae?)ndel specifies the pattern that is used to match all three strings.

Example

The following table shows some examples of regular expression patterns for Word and what strings or characters would match.

Pattern	What it matches	Why does it match?
/[0-9a-zA-Z]/	Matches all alphanumeric strings.	Matches any number, any lower case letters in the alphabet, and any upper case letters in the alphabet.
/b[aeiou]t/	Matches words such as "bat", "bet", "bit", "bot" and "but", "baseball bat", and "bitter taste".	Matches any expression that contains the letter "b", followed by any one of the vowels (a,e,i,o, and u), and followed by the letter "t".
/b*t/	Matches words such as "bat" and "bait", "but" also part of the string "best t"ime.	Matches any expression beginning with the letter "b" and ending with the "t".
/<(boot)/	Matches words such as "booth", but not "reboot".	Matches any word that begins with (<) "bat".