Text and pattern matching
Zoho DataPrep supports the following text and pattern matching types.
Text literals: Text literals are used to match the exact specified text in your data.
Regular expressions: Regex are used to match data based on the expression provided. For example, the regex ^\d+ is used to match any number of digits in the input data from the staring position.
Patterns: Pattern tokens provide a simpler and more readable alternative to regular expressions.
The following section describes how pattern matching works in Zoho DataPrep.
Patterns
The following table contains the list of tokens and the syntax for each pattern supported in DataPrep.
Character patterns
These tokens apply to one or more characters part of the text data type.
|
Pattern |
Description |
|
{alpha} |
Set of all alphabets [A-Za-z] |
|
{alpha_numeric} |
Set of all alphabets and numbers [A-Za-z0-9] |
|
{lower} |
Set of all lower characters [a-z] |
|
{upper} |
Set of all upper characters [A-Z] |
|
{digit} |
Set of all integers [0-9] |
|
{number} |
Set of all integers and decimal numbers |
|
{special_character} |
Set of all special characters [e.g. -/,*&^%#@! etc.] |
|
{white_space} |
A white space character [' '] |
|
{any} |
Set of all characters |
|
{other} |
Set of all non-ASCII characters |
|
{'constant'} |
Matches the given text enclosed inside single quotes or double quotes |
|
{word} |
Set of all alphabets, numbers and underscore i.e. {alpha_numeric} (including underscore) |
|
{username} |
Characters prefixed with @ |
|
{hashtag} |
Characters prefixed with # |
Position patterns
These tokens apply to the positions relative to the text data type.
|
Pattern |
Description |
|
{start} |
Start of the line |
|
{end} |
End of the line |
Pattern construction
The following rules apply while constructing patterns for matching data.
- Enclose a pattern token within '{ }'.
E.g. {alpha} - Append a '*' after the token to match zero or more number of occurrences.
E.g. {alpha}* - Append a '+' after the token to match one or more number of occurrences.
E.g. {alpha}+ - Append a number after the token to match the exact number of occurrence.
E.g. {alpha}{3} - Enclose a lower and upper bound constraint within '{ }' after the token to match within a specified range.
E.g. {alpha}{2,5} - Enclose constants within ' ' to form a token.
E.g. {'Bob'}
You can add tokens one after the other to construct a full length pattern with multiple matching conditions. If you wish to match either of the two patterns, use the logical OR condition using ' | ' in between the two patterns.
For e.g., {'Bob'} | {'Robert'}
Pattern examples
1. Pattern to match the first word in a text.
Input data |
DataPrep supports pattern matching. |
Pattern |
{start}{alpha}+ |
Matched data |
DataPrep |
2. Pattern to match the last 3 digits of a country calling code.
Input data |
+1 340 |
Pattern |
{digit}{3}{end} |
Matched data |
340 |
3. Pattern to match a credit card number:
Input data |
1234-1234-1234-1234 |
Pattern |
{start}{digit}{4}{special_character}{digit}{4}{special_character}{digit}{4}{special_character}{digit}{4}{end} |
Matched data |
1234-1234-1234-1234 |
Note: You can include the {start} and {end} tokens to match the data only when the pattern is found across the entire cell value.
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