On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:16:01 -0700, Eric_NY
wrote:

I see what you mean.

The problem I was getting was that the "\b" was excluding some cases that I
found in my data (such as "SR1234567" and "1234567remedy"). there were other
cases with a non-space immediately adjacent to the 7-digit sequence. So I
just took out the "\b" part of the pattern.

Aha. I see the problem. It's possible (but not necessary in view of what you
wrote below) to account for that. For example, one could look for the 7 digits
to be bounded by either a non-digit or the beginning or end of the line.


(I was also embarrassed when I presented the results and realized that my
7-digit numbers actually began at 987262 - i.e., a 6-digit number, so not all
of them were in fact 7 digits. So my logic was wrong and I missed one that I
should have found.)

Again, if you required a permanent solution, that could be adjusted for.


But for my current purposes this is good enough.

They do say that "perfect is the enemy of good enough" :-)

I'm doing a one-time
analysis of several thousand records, and don't need to develop a permanent,
perfect solution. I revised the regular expression to be "good enough"
considering the data that I saw in front of me.

Many thanks for your help.

Glad to. I learn also. Thanks for the feedback.
--ron