Learning Pentaho Data Integration 8 CE - Third Edition

Extracting parts of strings using regular expressions

Some of the steps in the preceding table can be used to extract static parts of a string, for example, the first N characters or the characters from position X to position Y.

Now suppose that you have a field that contains a zip code. This code can be anywhere in the field and you can recognize it because it is preceded either by ZIP CODE: or ZC:. The zip code itself has exactly five digits. There is no way to know beforehand in which position of the string the zip code is located, so none of these options serves you in this case. In order to extract the portion of the field in situations like this, you can use a RegEx Evaluation step. This step—classified under the Scripting category—verifies ...