Using Power Query to extract the first occurring number from a string (URL)

[julienvdc]

I have a coumn with URLs from which I would like to extract the first occuring number. My constraints:

• the numbers don't occurre at the same position
• there might be some numbers further in the string that I do not want to extract
• the number to extract does not always have the same length
• i just want to extract the first occurring number (starting from the left).

It seems quite simple but I haven't found any previous posts sharing a solution to a similar issue...

Any ideas how I could achieve this?

I am thinking that if I can find the starting and ending position of that number then I could perhaps use splitter.SplitTextByPosition...

[Ahmedx · Accepted solution]

Text.Combine(List.FirstN(
List.Select(
    Text.Split(Text.Select(
        [Column1],{"0".."9","/"}),"/"),(x)=>x<>""),1))

[julienvdc]

It workssssssssss! thank you so much for the quick support! Hope this helps others in the future.

[julienvdc]

Here is an example.

My column would have URLs as such:

/questions/11928/qwertyuio-asdfghj-34.html

/questions/7229/can-you-share-your-experience-in-developing-a-trai.html?childToView=8665#answer-8665

/articles/11867/jhbvcfgtyujn-4.html

/idea/11875/kjhgukjnk.html

/content/idea/234/kjhgukjnk.html

/content/articles/888383/jhbvcfgtyujn-4.html

The extract would be as such:

11928

7229

11867

11875

234

888383

[Ahmedx]

post an example and the desired result