StripNonNumeric Function using Regular Expressions by Ian Weatherburn

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October 03, 2000

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StripNonNumeric Function using Regular Expressions
by Ian Weatherburn

I attach a revised version (written in VB, but easily converted to VBScript) that uses regular-expression matching to perform a far more efficient replacement. On a 440,754 byte file your routine took about 14 seconds while on the same file the regular expression matching took less than 1 second!!!!

Kind Regards

Ian Weatherburn

Here is the attached regular expression algorithm.

'*----------------------------------------------------------------------
'* Method:      StripNonNumeric
'* Parameters: sInput - The string to remove numeric values from
'*              sReplaceStr - (Optional) Replace values with this string
'*                             Defaults to empty string ("")
'* Returns:     String - The replace string
'* Description: Utilising regular expression matching, remove numeric
'*              values from the passed string and return the cleaned
'*              up string
'*----------------------------------------------------------------------
Private Function StripNonNumeric(ByVal sInput As String, _
                                 Optional ByVal sReplaceStr As String = "")
As String
Dim objRegExp As Object
Dim sNew As String

' Create an instance of the VBScript Regular Expression matching object
Set objRegExp = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")

With objRegExp
    ' A Boolean value that indicates if a pattern should match all
occurrences
    ' in an entire search string or just the first one.
    .Global = True

    ' Sets or returns a Boolean value that indicates if a pattern search is
    ' case-sensitive or not. Redundant in this case - for example only
    .IgnoreCase = True

    ' Sets or returns the regular expression pattern being searched for
    .Pattern = "[0123456789]"

    ' Replaces text found in a regular expression search.
    sNew = .Replace(sInput, sReplaceStr)

End With ' objRegExp

' Release the regular expression matching object
Set objRegExp = Nothing

' Return the stripped string
StripNonNumeric = sNew
End Function ' StripNonNumeric
'*----------------------------------------------------------------------