match

The match statement is to used search either a specified string or the contents of a named buffer using a regular expression.

Syntax

matchlabel expression target

Details

The three parameters serve the following purposes:

Label

The label associates a meaningful name to the search. Once the match has been attempted, two variables will be created or updated as follows:

These variables can be checked after the match in order to determine the result status and access the results.

Expression

The regular expression must contain one or more characters enclosed in brackets - ( ... ) - the contents of which are termed a subgroup. If a successful match is made then the portion of the target text that was matched by the subgroup will be returned in the label.RESULTvariable.

Target

The target determines whether a supplied string or the contents of a named buffer are searched. By default the parameter will be treated as a string.

If the target argument is surrounded with curly braces - { ... } - then it is taken to be the name of a buffer and the expression will be applied to the contents of that buffer.

Examples

Search the contents of a variable for the text following the word 'connection:' with or without a capital 'C':

match varsearch "[Cc]onnection: (.*)" ${variable}
if (${varsearch.STATUS} = MATCH) {
    print Connection string is: ${varsearch.RESULT}
} else {
    print No match found
}

Search a text file previously retrieved from a HTTP request to locate the word 'Error' or 'error'

match error_check "([Ee]rror)" {text_data}
if (${error_check.STATUS} == MATCH) {
    print Found: ${error_check.RESULT}
} else {
    print No error was found
}