Question

I have a problem processing a regex in VB. My Text is:

is sadly currently in Toronto main station undetermined late

I tested my regex in Expresso and found this regex for my purpose. The thing is: Toronto main station can also be only “Toronto”. So this is my pattern:

is sadly currently in (([A-Za-z]*)(\s|-)){1,3}(.|\s)*?undetermined

The problem is processing the regex in VB, because my Pattern gives me a result like this:

• is sadly currently in Toronto main station undetermined
  • undetermined
    • Toronto
    • Main
    • undetermined
  • undetermined
    • Toronto
    • Main
    • undetermined
      ….

But I cannot access the words toronto and main via VB – also I dont want ‘undetermined’ be part of the result. I tried match.item(0).submatches.item(0).submatches.item(0) but VBA already throws an error if I try match.item(0).submatches.item(0).submatches and states that there is no such object – obviously it cannot process some those “multilevel” regexes. Is there a way to improve my pattern so that I only have to use one submatches or is it possible to use multiple submatches via VBA?!

Edit:

GetDelay.Pattern = is sadly currently in (([A-Za-z]*)(\s|-)){1,3}(.|\s)*?undetermined"
GetDelay.IgnoreCase = True
GetDelay.Multiline = True
...
If GetDelay.TEst(MailBody) Then
        Set m = GetDelay.Execute(MailBody)
        If m.Item(0).SubMatches.Count > 0 Then
            OrtBody = m.Item(0).SubMatches.Item(0).SubMatches.Item(0) + " " + m.Item(0).SubMatches.Item(0).SubMatches.Item(1)  'Error 424 comes here - Object required
            If GetReason.TEst(AbweichungsmailBody) Then
                Set m = GetReason.Execute(AbweichungsmailBody)
                If m.Item(0).SubMatches.Count > 0 Then
                    Reason= m.Item(0).SubMatches.Item(0)
                Else
                    Reason= "Error!"
                End If
            Else
                Reason = "Keine Angabe gefunden!"
            End If
        Else
            thisfunction= False
        End If
    Else
        thisfunction= False
    End If

Answer 1

Capturing results from a repeated sub-expression (in your case (([A-Za-z]*)(\s|-)){1,3}) gets tricky in any language. I suggest the following as a simpler approach:

1) Match the whole portion you are interested in with a simple Regex:

GetDelay.Pattern = "is sadly currently in (.*?) undetermined"

2) Once you have matched the portion of interest, perform further analysis to get what you want. You could use another RegEx for this step, though I think you could just Split() with a space as the delimiter.