Previous: 113: Making Complex Searches

A regular expression (sometimes abbreviated to regex) is a way for a computer user or programmer to express how a computer program should look for a specified pattern in text and then what the program is to do when each pattern match is found. Regular expressions can be designed to perform complex searches for just about anything – email addresses, phone numbers, urls, prices, part numbers, you name it. In fact, entire books have been written about regular expressions and how to use them. See Regular Expressions for more detailed information.

Here is a simple example that illustrates regular expressions in action. This example searches the Address field looking for instances where a numeric digit ([0-9]) is followed by an upper case alphabetic character ([A-Z]).

It turns out that about 7% of the addresses in this database have this combination, the blue arrows show some of them.

Next: 115: Searching with a Formula

See Also

• Find/Select Dialog -- using a dialog to search for specific data.
• Regular Expressions -- Regular expressions can be used to look for a specified pattern in text and then specify what to do with each pattern match that is found
• Searching -- searching a database to find or select information.

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