Question

I’ve had some serious issues with trying to get my Regex working properly trying to extract an UNC path. I’ve read through countless tutorials, guides and even tested my regex’s in online regexp testers (where they seem to work), but I still can’t get it to work in my code. I can, however, get it working in PHP for example.

I’m using PrimalScript to try to see what goes wrong, more on that later. Here’s my current code which I’m using:

Dim WSHShell, strString, nrMatches, myMatches

Set WSHShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set myRegExp = New RegExp
myRegExp.IgnoreCase = True
myRegExp.Global = True
' myRegExp.Pattern = "^\\\\(.*?)+\\(.*)*\s...\\(.*)*$"  <-- Returns 1 match, the whole String
' myRegExp.Pattern = "^\\\\(\w?)+\\(\w)*\s...\\(\w)*$"  <-- Returns 0 matches
' myRegExp.Pattern = "^\\\\(.*?)+\\\(.*)*\s...\\\(.*)*$"  <-- Gives Syntax Error
' myRegExp.Pattern = "^\\\\\\\\(.*?)+\\\(.*)*\s...\\\(.*)*$" <-- Gives Syntax Error
' myRegExp.Pattern = "^\\\\(.*)\\(.*)\s\.\.\.\\(.*)?$"  <-- Returns 1 match, the whole String
myRegExp.Pattern = "^(.*)+\\(.*)+(\s\.\.\.\\(.*))?$" ' <-- Returns 1 match, the whole String

strString = "\\domain.subnet.net\share1 ...\share2"

Set myMatches = myRegExp.Execute(strString)
nrMatches = myMatches.Count
MsgBox "Found " & nrMatches & " Matches!", vbOKOnly, "Number of Matches"
For Each myMatch In myMatches
    MsgBox "Value: " & myMatch.Value, vbOKOnly, "Found Match"
Next
WScript.Quit

The commented regex’s are just a small portion of what I’ve tried, these are the ones I’ve had “most” sucess with.

One thing that caught my eye was that, while debugging in PrimalScript, it basically told me that the myMatches.Item = Invalid number of parameters
Googling on it gave me nothing, though, but perhaps someone here knows what parameters Execute needs?
I could provide a screenshot of it if necessary, just let me know.

Thanks, I’ll appreciate any pointers or tips to help me get this going =]

Answer 1

I am not sure what you are expecting.

Do you want to result strString = "\\domain.subnet.net\share1 ...\share2" in 2 matches? (Would …\share2 be a valid path?)

If there are only paths in your string divided by whitespace, then you can try:

[^\s]+ see rubular

or

[\\\w.]+ see rubular

or if it has to start with \\or .

(?<=\A|\s)(?:\\|\.)[^\s]+ see Regexr (because rubular does not support look behinds)

UPDATE:

According to your comments, I hope this will do what you want:

^((?:\\|\.)[^\s]+)\\[^\\\s]+\s+\.{3}([^\s]*)

Rubular

You will find the path till the last \ in the group 1 and the part following on the ... in group 2. So to get your replacement you have just to concatenate group 1 and group 2.