I need to take a bill of material file from a customer in xml format and import it into our system. The problem I'm running into is that the terms they use to describe the types of material may vary. So, for example, if they are specifying a piece of threaded rod, they may call it "THREADED ROD", "THREADEDROD", "THRD ROD", "THRD'D ROD" or some other variation. Another example might be rectangular tubing. They might call it "RECTANGULAR TUBING", "RECT TUBING", "RECT TUBE", etc. There will be many types of material besides these two that I need to catch. Once the program determines what the material is it then branches to the appropriate subroutine to do further parsing. I was trying to think of a way to use regex or the "Like" or "Contains" operators to do this. Here is one way I thought of using "Select ... Case" but it isn't very flexible & will only catch hard-coded terms:

Code:
        Select Case material

            Case "THREADED ROD", "THRD ROD" 'etc...

            Case "RECTANGULAR TUBE", "RECT TUBE", "RECT TUBING" 'etc...

        End Select
I am looking for something a little more flexible. Anyone have any ideas?