RegExp replace help

[Retinaburn]

Hi

I am fairly new to vb and have been trying to write some scripts to do some monotonous tasks at work. This is the scenario:-

Every month we get a list of about 400 users from our HR department. This txt file is basically a list of profiles which need to be deleted for users that have left the company. Below is an example of the list

\\severname\Profiles$\Username
\\severname\Profiles$\Username
\\severname\Profiles$\Username
\\AN\ANDFS\HOMEDIRS4\C0202484\Profile
\\AN\ANDFS\HOMEDIRS6\E1149536\Profile

Now the lines with \\severname\Profiles$\Username are fine but what i need to do is change the lines that are like \\AN\ANDFS\HOMEDIRS6\E1149536\Profile so that they no longer have \Profile at the end. The HOMEDIRS dir and the folder after it change depending on the users ID and we have over 30,000 staff worldwide. I have done a bit of reading on RegExp and it seems the way to go but it totally confuses me. So please please any help would be appreciated.

RB

[SambaNeko]

Once you've imported your text from the file, your regex pattern might look something like this:

^(\\\\AN\\ANDFS\\HOMEDIRS[0-9]\\[0-9A-Z]{8})\\Profile$

^ signifies the beginning of a string, and $ signifies the end of it. The parentheses are for capturing a part of the tested string for usage later. The forward slash is a special escape character in regex, so to get a literal one, you need to double them up ("\\\\" is 2 literal forward slashes).

Then you have your path info, where I'm making some assumptions about your data. "HOMEDIRS[0-9]" assumes that this will always look like "HOMEDIRS" followed by a single number, 0-9. "[0-9A-Z]{8}" assumes that this next part will always be a set of 8 alphanumeric, uppercase characters. Finally "Profile" at the end.

So, to use it...

dim objRegExp
set objRegExp = new RegExp
with objRegExp
  .Pattern = "^(\\\\AN\\ANDFS\\HOMEDIRS[0-9]\\[0-9A-Z]{8})\\Profile$"
  .IgnoreCase = varIgnoreCase
  .Global = True
end with
ereg = objRegExp.replace("\\AN\ANDFS\HOMEDIRS6\E1149536\Profile","$1")
set objRegExp = nothing
msgBox ereg

When ereg displays in msgBox, you should have "\\AN\ANDFS\HOMEDIRS6\E1149536". The $1 in the replace() method is a back reference to the part of the string you captured in the parentheses of your pattern.

[Retinaburn]

That looks like exactly what I am after. Thanks very much. I'll let you know how I get on.

regards

RB

[SambaNeko]

Actually, one thing that should change...

.IgnoreCase = varIgnoreCase

"varIgnoreCase" is a variable that got left out of the snippet I posted here. Change it to True or False, as per your preference.