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125. Using Regexes With EzeScan

Regular Expressions (Regexes) may be used to manipulate captured data in EzeScan. For example - formatting dates; removing unwanted characters; replacing data with something else.

Regexes have some common anchors, character classes, quantifiers etc. Here are a few:

*

Identifies that there can be none, one or more of the preceding item
e.g. 0*1 can be used to find 01 or 0001 or 1.

+

identifies that there must be one or more of the preceding item
e.g. 0+1 can be used to find 01 or 0001 but not 1.

^

Is for the start of the search text, e.g. ^0* would find leading 0's
It can be used as a replacement regex to strip the leading zeros from 000012 to leave 12.

.

Is used to match any character
e.g ^.*[0-9]$ would find any numeric value or any value that ends with a numeric.

$

Is for the end of the search text
e.g. -$ would remove a trailing dash, e.g. 1234- would become 1234.

\b

Is used to identify the start and end of a word
e.g. \b\d{2}\b would find 12 in 12 Years.

|

Is the OR separator this means we can look for multiple words
e.g a 2-digit word or a 3 digit word would be \b\d{2}\b|\b\d{3}\b

\

Is an escape character. It can be used to remove a character that is used in regex codes
e.g. to remove || at the end of a value you can't do ||$ you need to do \|\|$.

These are a few examples of Regexes commonly used within EzeScan:

TIP: The REGEXs in this section may be copied and pasted straight into the EzeScan REGEX editor. Drag your mouse across the values from the first " to the last "
for example "^0*(\d*)-(\d*)( - .*)","$1$2$3" The blue text represents the values to be replaced and the red text represents what the text is being replaced with the blue text.

  • Replace the 3rd and 6th character with a /
    This is handy if an OCR has picked up the / in a date as a 1 e.g. 12112112 will become 12/12/12
    Regex = "^(..).(..).","$1/$2/"

  • Keep the first value where it is delimited with two pipes (|)
    e.g. PO1234||0||1 will become P01234
    Regex = "^([^\|]+).*$","$1"

  • This will add a .00 if there is no decimal value. If there is a decimal value it will leave as is
    e.g. 100 will become 100.00 but 100.45 would remain as 100.45
    Regex = "(?!\s-?\d+\.\d+|^-?\d+\.\d+)(\s-?\d+\b|^-?\d+\b)","$1.00"

  • Clear out the whole value if it ends with a \
    e.g. "ezescan\" will become blank (null) whereas "ezescan" will remain as "ezescan"
    Regex = "^.*\\+$",""

  • Set a value to error if a numeric value has a minus
    e.g. 1 or 1.00 will be OK whereas -1 or -1.00 will change the value to error
    Regex = "-[0-9]+\.?[0-9]*","error"

  • Remove the first two characters out of a value
    e.g. "BA123456" will become "123456"
    Regex="^..",""
    Tip - add more dots to remove more characters

  • Convert a HP RM/TRIM KFI browse value to just output the first name and last name
    e.g. "Citizen, John (Mr) -lu 1660" will become "Jon Citizen"
    Regex = "-(lu [0-9]+)",""," *([(][^()]*[)])","","([^,]+),([^,]+)","$2$1","^ *",""

  • To remove the word VIC and any words after it
    e.g. "1 Smith St VIC" will become "1 Smith St"
    Regex = "^(.*)\sVIC\s.*$","$1"
    Note - Change the value VIC to NSW or QLD etc for other states


Suggested Regex Resources

If you are new to using Regexes we suggest you take a look at these resources on the internet.

  1. http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/regular-expressions/
    Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet by Dave Child - A quick reference guide for regular expressions (regex), including symbols, ranges, grouping, assertions and some sample patterns to get you started.

  2. http://www.regexbuddy.com/
    Learn, Create, Understand, Test, Use and Save Regular Expressions with RegexBuddy
    You could buy a copy of RegexBuddy from the program's Authors.

    • Install and license it onto your PC where EzeScan is installed.

    • Start EzeScan & edit a KFI field → use one of our Regex Edit buttons to start up our 'Edit Regex' form. For example, the window below appears when working with a KFI Discovery field.

    • Then press the 'Editor' button (if it's grayed out tick the 'Use' button below it to enable it).

    • Ezescan will launch RegexBuddy if you have it installed on your PC.

    • Any regex entered into RegexBuddy will be automatically transferred to the corresponding regex field on the EzeScan Edit Regex form when you close RegexBuddy.

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