New: REGEX formula functions

[Jason]

Hello everyone! We recently launched some exciting new additions to our formula field with three new regex (regular expression) functions:

1. REGEX_MATCH(string, regex)
2. REGEX_EXTRACT(string, regex)
3. REGEX_REPLACE(string, regex, replacement)

These functions can be used to match character combinations within text strings. For those interested, Airtable’s REGEX functions are implemented using the RE2 regular expression library.

You can learn more about these functions in this article or check out some example use cases shared in the posts below.

[Russell_Bishop1]

This is so helpful for preventing Automations throwing errors!

[ZYGOTE_DEVELOPM]

Is it possible to extract an entire URL from a larger block of text using this formula?

[Justin_Barrett]

Not that exact formula, but if you do a web search for “regex extract url” there are lots of options that come up. However, they would need to be tested to find one that works with the flavor of Regex used by Airtable. Sadly I don’t have time to test, so I can’t offer a more specific solution.

[Jason_Woodruff1]

Hi,
Wondering if REGEX_REPLACE could handle replacing mid-sentence new lines with “”. The solutions I have use look behind or possession (neither supported by RE2), or replacement with capture groups (not supported by REGEX_REPLACE sfaik).

[Jason_Woodruff1]

ha, ha, capture groups do work!

REGEX_REPLACE(Text,"(\\S)[ \\t]*(?:\\r\n|\n)[ \\t]*(\\S)","$1 $2")

[Greg_Joyce]

Hm. I seem to be getting some unexpected results. Could be my regex game is weak.

Formula:

REGEX_REPLACE(REGEX_REPLACE('-- --  ---', '\\s+','x'), '-+','y')

Expectation:

yxyxy

Result:

yxy xy

Or with the more concise

    REGEX_REPLACE('-- --  ---', '\\s+','x')

Result:

   --x-- x---

[kuovonne]

@Greg_Joyce I get your “expected result” when I create a formula field with your formula.

Greg_Joyce:

Formula:

REGEX_REPLACE(REGEX_REPLACE('-- --  ---', '\\s+','x'), '-+','y')

Expectation:

yxyxy

[Matt_Coppernoll]

Can’t get REGEX_EXTRACT to work as expected when trying to extract multiple things from a string. My goal is to extract Initials from a Name field. So “John Smith” would extract “JS”.

I’ve verified all these Regex works with an online tester, but can’t get them to work in Airtable:

REGEX_EXTRACT(Name,"\b(\w)")

REGEX_EXTRACT(Name,"(\b[a-zA-Z])[a-zA-Z]* ?")

REGEX_EXTRACT(Name,"([[:alpha:]])[[:alpha:]]+")

Value of Name:
“John Smith”

Current results:
“J”

Expected results:
“JS”

[dilipborad]

You need to write 2 expressions and merge them like this.
REGEX_EXTRACT({Name},"^(.{1})") & REGEX_EXTRACT({Name},"\\s+([a-zA-Z]){1}")

I hope this is works for you.

[kuovonne]

In Airtable, REGEX_EXTRACT extracts only the first match, not all matches.