Forum Discussion
Extract last sequence of numerical value from string
I have a process that works but it is rather inelegant. I'm sure there must be a better way to do this.
In a certain column, the last several characters might be numbers. If the length of a number sequence is four, five, or six characters then I need to extract that sequence into a new column. If the length of final sequence numbers is less than four characters, then nothing should be extracted. There may be numbers at the beginning of the string and/or in the middle but only the numerical characters at the end of the string are of interest.
There is not a constant delimiter. There may or may not be a space between the last alpha character and the first numerical character. There might or might not be a symbol chacacter, such as a colon or a dash.
ColumnA NewColumn
TEXT TEXT TEXT 123456 123456
TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT 1234 1234
TEXT TEXT TEXT12345 12345
TEXT 123 TEXT TEXT-123456 123456
1234 TEXT TEXT TEXT:12345 12345
TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT 123 null
1234 TEXT TEXT TEXT 1 null
TEXT TEXT 123456 TEXT null
You may use below in a custom column
= if Text.Select(Text.End([ColumnA],6),{"0".."9"})=Text.End([ColumnA],6) then Text.End([ColumnA],6) else if Text.Select(Text.End([ColumnA],5),{"0".."9"})=Text.End([ColumnA],5) then Text.End([ColumnA],5) else if Text.Select(Text.End([ColumnA],4),{"0".."9"})=Text.End([ColumnA],4) then Text.End([ColumnA],4) else nullEDIT - Another alternative construct is this which is more flexible
=[a=List.LastN(List.Transform(Text.ToList([ColumnA]),(x)=>if Text.Contains(Text.Combine({"0".."9"}),x) then x else null), each _ <> null), b=if List.Count(a)<4 then null else Text.Combine(a)][b]
2 Replies
You may use below in a custom column
= if Text.Select(Text.End([ColumnA],6),{"0".."9"})=Text.End([ColumnA],6) then Text.End([ColumnA],6) else if Text.Select(Text.End([ColumnA],5),{"0".."9"})=Text.End([ColumnA],5) then Text.End([ColumnA],5) else if Text.Select(Text.End([ColumnA],4),{"0".."9"})=Text.End([ColumnA],4) then Text.End([ColumnA],4) else nullEDIT - Another alternative construct is this which is more flexible
=[a=List.LastN(List.Transform(Text.ToList([ColumnA]),(x)=>if Text.Contains(Text.Combine({"0".."9"}),x) then x else null), each _ <> null), b=if List.Count(a)<4 then null else Text.Combine(a)][b]