Q: I'd like to do a seek with AND/OR in the source code, which is currently not possible in VO itself. I understand now it should be
possible with VOPP regular expressions, and I read in the help file:
+ (one or more) e.g. do+g matches...
So I try for example : substr3+#E_status, selecting Reg. exp. (match case = off)
hoping to find a line like
IF SubStr3(odbEmails:FIELDGET(#E_status),3,1)="1"
but it does not. What do I do I wrong?
A: Regular expressions can be complex but are very powerful.
The example for the "+" metacharacter in the Regular Expression help says:
do+g matches a string made up of one or more "o" characters: dooog, doog,
dog match, but dg doesn't
So the "+" works in conjunction with the preceding character. Your use of
the "+" above would result in a search for strings containing one or more
threes. Now what I think you really want is to match "substr3" and
"#E_status" with any number of any characters in between. To do this you
would need:
substr3.+#E_status
This works because the "." metacharacter in Regular Expressions matches any
character and the "+" says you want one or more. (If you had wanted zero or
more you would use "*")
Full details of Regular Expressions are discussed here:
http://www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/regex/regex_toc.htmlTo help understand regular expressions you might try Visual RegExp:
http://laurent.riesterer.free.fr/regexpSome info about use of Regular Expressions in various languages and .NET:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/tutorial.htmlIn addition to support for Regular Expressions, don't forget that VOPP will
let you search within the results of a previous search. This can be very
useful when trying to narrow down the number of matches.
--
Paul
----
Paul Piko
Piko Computing Consultants
http://www.piko.com.au