Question

I’m searching for strings within strings using Regex. The pattern is a string literal that ends in (, e.g.

# pattern
" before the bracket ("

# string
this text is before the bracket (and this text is inside) and this text is after the bracket

I know the pattern will work if I escape the character with a backslash, i.e.:

# pattern
" before the bracket \\("

But the pattern strings are coming from another search and I can not control what characters will be or where. Is there a way of escaping an entire string literal so that anything between markers is treated as a string? For example:

# pattern
\" before the ("

The only other option I have is to do a substitute adding escapes for every protected character.

---

re.escape is exactly what I need. I’m using regexp in Access VBA which doens’t have that method. I only have replace, execute or test methods.

Is there a way to escape everything within a string in VBA?

Thanks

Answer 1

Maybe write your own VBA escape function:

Function EscapeRegEx(text As String) As String
    Dim regEx As RegExp
    Set regEx = New RegExp

    regEx.Global = True
    regEx.Pattern = "(\[|\\|\^|\$|\.|\||\?|\*|\+|\(|\)|\{|\})"

    EscapeRegEx = regEx.Replace(text, "\$1")
End Function