getGroup

getGroup() Function

• Introduced in version 1.3b48

Returns the specified capture group for the specified match that was found using strfind().

Usage

getGroup(id, match, group)

Where

• id - is the id returned by strfind()
• match - is the number of the match found by strfind()
• group - is the number of the capture group found by strfind()

Example

[h: id = strfind("this is a test", "(\\S+)\\s(\\S+)\\s*")]
match 1, group 0 = [getGroup(id, 1, 0)]<br>
match 1, group 1 = [getGroup(id, 1, 1)]<br>
match 1, group 2 = [getGroup(id, 1, 2)]<br>
match 2, group 0 = [getGroup(id, 2, 0)]<br>
match 2, group 1 = [getGroup(id, 2, 1)]<br>
match 2, group 2 = [getGroup(id, 2, 2)]<br>

Returns:

match 1, group 0 = this is
match 1, group 1 = this 
match 1, group 2 = is 
match 2, group 0 = a test
match 2, group 1 = a 
match 2, group 2 = test 

Example explained

First off, normally you only need one \ in a regex statement, but because MT uses regex itself and the statement is preparsed you need to double escape it, so \\.

• S = 'everything that is NOT a whitespace'
• s = 'whitespace'
• + = '1 or more'
• * = '0 or more'

Have a look here for an overview.

Second important thing to know is that a 'group' is defined by '('parenthesis')': "(group1)(group2)(etc.)", where group0 returns the entire search result.

So \\S means grab the first none-whitespace you encounter, \\S+ means grap the first none-whitespace you encounter AND ALL characters after that until you encounter a whitespace. So the regex statement looks for (word)(whitespace)(word)(0 or more whitespace), where every 'parenthesized part' is a group. This will deliver 2 matches: "this is" and "a test". The first match is match 1, the second match 2. Each match thus consists out of 5 groups: 4 sets of parenthesis resulting in group1,2,3 & 4 and group0 returning the entire matched string.

Within one match there are 1 or more groups:

• The first group '0' returns the ENTIRE match.
• Every group after that will return partial matches that are within ().

So group '1' will return the first (\\S) part and group '2' will return the second (\\S) of the regex statement. These are respectively (for the first match): "this" and "is".

Here a link to test your regex statements (remember that for this applet you only use one \ while in MT you need \\.