extracting numbers from macros

[charlie wong]

Hello everyone

Wondering if there is anyway to destring a set of somewhat irregular macros which comprise strings and numbers. Example below:

local a1="sds30wer"
local a2="wweti256x"

forvalues i=1/2{
local n`i'=????? //how to extract the numbers from a1 and a2 so that correspondingly we get locals of n1=30, n2=256?
}

Thanks.

[daniel klein]

If there is only one number you could

local a1="sds30wer"
local a2="wweti256x"

forvalues i = 1/2 {
    if regexm("`a`i''", "([0-9]+)") {
        local n`i' = regexs(1) 
    }
    display "`n`i''"
}

Best
Daniel

[William Lisowski]

This code will remove all characters that are not decimal digits.

local a1 "sds30wer"
local a2 "wweti256x"
local a3 "ab12ef78gh"

forvalues i=1/3{
local n`i' = ustrregexra("`a`i''","\D","")
display "`a`i'' becomes `n`i''"
}

sds30wer becomes 30
wweti256x becomes 256
ab12ef78gh becomes 1278

[charlie wong]

Thanks a lot , Daniel!

[charlie wong]

William Lisowski , that is cool! May I ask, apart from "\D", are there any other similar secret codes that may be useful? or where can I find a list of such codes? Thanks!

[Bjarte Aagnes]

http://userguide.icu-project.org/strings/regexp