Value.match() Regex in Google Refine
openrefine, regex
Solution
OpenRefine doesn't add implicit wildcards to the end of the pattern as some systems do (and as one might expect). Try this pattern instead:
value.match(/.*?(\d+).*?/)[0]
You need the lazy/non-greedy qualifier (ie question mark) on the wildcards so that they don't gobble up some of your digits too. If you just use `/.*(\d+).*/` you'll only match a single digit because the rest of them will be taken by the .* pattern.
Full documentation for the implementation can be seen in Java's `Pattern` class docs.
Problem
I am trying to extract a sequence of numbers from a column in Google Refine. Here is my code for doing it: ``` value.match(/[\d]+/)[0] ``` The data in my column is in the format of ``` abcababcabc 1234566 abcabcbacdf ``` The results is "null". I have no idea why!! It is also null if instead of `\d` I try `\w`.