Google Sheets Regexextract

Question

If i have a string like abc_xyz, i can use =REGEXEXTRACT(B2, "(.*)_") to extract abc from it. But if i have a string like abc_xyz_qwe, the function will return abc_xyz.

So can you help me figure out how to get the formula to return only abc if there are multiple values separated by underscores in the string.

Possible duplicate of [My regex is matching too much. How do I make it stop?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22444/my-regex-is-matching-too-much-how-do-i-make-it-stop) — CertainPerformance, Aug 16 '18 at 02:16
I'm not too familiar with Regex, so how do i use that? I understand the ^ symbolizes the start of the string but im not sure what the rest is doing — Abhay, Aug 16 '18 at 02:19
@Abhay The suggestion is for you to use `(.*?)_` instead of just `(.*)_`. Using the former tells the regex engine to stop at the _first_ underscore, which is the behavior you want. — Tim Biegeleisen, Aug 16 '18 at 02:23
When you don't know what a pattern is doing, you can plug it into an analyzer like on regex101 — CertainPerformance, Aug 16 '18 at 02:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 16 '18 at 02:30

2

Replaced =REGEXEXTRACT(B2, "(.*)_") with =REGEXEXTRACT(B2, "([^_]+)") and it started picking the part of the string before the first underscore.

Credit to: @CertainPerformance for the answer.

answered Aug 16 '18 at 02:30

Abhay

827
9
34

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 16 '18 at 02:24

1

Without regex:

=left(B2,find("_",B2)-1)

answered Aug 16 '18 at 02:24

pnuts

58,317
11
87
139

Google Sheets Regexextract

2 Answers2