regular expression(s) for carriage return and/or line feed

[stevetye]

Greetings,
I am attempting to retrieve and save the chassis type for a device. The following device dialog is relevant:
ICX-6450_3-77#show version | i HW:|System:|System Mode:|Chassis
HW: Stackable ICX6450-48
I want to save the text between "HW: " and the end of the line.

I wrote the following function:
Function ReturnFirstInstanceOfRegExp( strREGEX_TO_FIND, strTEXT_TO_SEARCH )
'If strREGEX_TO_FIND is not found in strTEXT_TO_SEARCH, function returns empty string
Dim MYREGEX, objSEARCHRESULT, retValue
retValue = ""
set MYREGEX = New RegExp
MYREGEX.Pattern = strREGEX_TO_FIND ' Set "Pattern" Property for MYREGE object
MYREGEX.IgnoreCase = False ' Set "IgnoreCase" Property for MYREGEX object
MYREGEX.Global = True ' Set "Global" Property for MYREGEX object
'MsgBox "HERE MYREGEX.Pattern below:" & vbCr & "xxxx" & vbCr & MYREGEX.Pattern & vbCr & "xxxx" & vbCr & "strTEXT_TO_SEARCH is " & vbCr & "xxxx" & strTEXT_TO_SEARCH & vbCr & "xxxx"
Set objSEARCHRESULT = MYREGEX.Execute(strTEXT_TO_SEARCH) ' Execute search. Syntax "object.Execute(string)" where object is always a RegExp object
If objSEARCHRESULT.Count = 0 then
retValue = ""
Else
retValue = objSEARCHRESULT(0).SubMatches(0)
End If
ReturnFirstInstanceOfRegExp = retValue

End Function

I call this function from another function with the text:
strCHASSIS = ReturnFirstInstanceOfRegExp( "HW:\s([A-Za-z0-9-\s]+)", strDIRECT ). Observe the regex does not include any LF or CR characters.

Then using MsgBox to inspect the value of strCHASSIS I observe that it contains the text "Stackable ICX6450-48" and two, count 'em, two carriage returns followed by a line feed. (I determined this by sending the variable to a text file, then turning on the 'show all characters' in Notepad++.)

How do I get the variable to contain only the required text?

Any help is much appreciated!

Cheers,
st

[bgagnon]

Hi st,

I think your regular expression is the problem. The \s at the end is what is causing the line ending characters to be matched:

\s
Matches any white space character including space, tab, form-feed, and so on. Equivalent to [ \f\n\r\t\v].

HW:\s([A-Za-z0-9-\s]+)

Did you mean for the last - above to be \-?

What are the possibilities you need to handle?

HW: Stackable ICX6450-48

Will there always be a hyphen (-)?

If so, will there always be two digits following the hyphen?

[stevetye]

Hi Brenda,

Thanks! That makes sense. Talk about learning the hard way!

I don't know exactly what all the possibilities will be.

So I tried using \r and \n as delimiters for the string, as in
HW:\s([A-Za-z0-9-\s]+)\n
and
HW:\s([A-Za-z0-9-\s]+)\r
but that didn't work either.

Do you have any ideas?

Thanks so much and, as always,
Cheers,
st

[bgagnon]

Hi st,

Maybe just add a negative range that excludes the line endings:

HW:\s([A-Za-z0-9\sA-Za-z0-9-\s][^\r\n]+)

In my limited testing, this would match anything alphanumeric on either side of the hyphen (but not line endings).

[bgagnon]

Hi st,

One of my colleagues suggested this pattern would work best based on the info provided:

HW:\s*([^\r\n]+)

[stevetye]

Ah, that is beautiful!

Thanks so much!

Cheers,
st