MATLAB: Extracting pieces of string data

Question

I have several hundred files where I need to take specific sections of a string from 3 different formats:

Here are the 3 formats:

A='2007011101_00001_00012_011914.new_1_I_CE_TH_J2.tif';

B='w2c1_00104_3_I_CE_TE_J2.tif';

C='center_20110_2_I_CE_FI_J.tif';

I need to save the part of the string before the (_1_) or (_2_) or (_3_)

So for A, I need: '2007011101_00001_00012_011914.new'

for B, I need: 'w2c1_00104'

for C, I need; 'center_20110'

Right now I am working on a solution using regexp, something along the lines of:

name=char(regexp(char(regexp(A,'\w+_1_','match')),'\w+','match'))

I haven't been able to come up with a way to identify and keep the multiple underscores and alphanumeric data that precede the (_1_)

Maybe I need to separate this functionality into 3 if statements to deal with the 3 different formats I am looking at?

Thank you for your help, Matlab Central is awesome!

Answer 1

out = regexp({A,B,C},'.*(?=_\d_I_CE)','match');
out = [out{:}]';