MATLAB: Using regular expressions to identify names and unit from string

MATLABregular expression

Hello,
I have the following strings
'name1/name2 [°C]'
'name1/name2 [kW]'
'name1/name2 [%]'
or
'name1/name2 {0,1}'
or
'name1/name2'
How can I use regular expressions to find the names and the unit, if there is any?
Thanks!

Best Answer

You could do it in two steps, like this:
str='name1/name2 [C]'
%%Extract unit, if there is one
exp=']|[|}|{';
id=regexp(str,exp);
if isempty(id)==0
    unit=str(id(1)+1:id(2)-1)
end
%%Extract name
exp='/| ';
id=regexp(str,exp);
if numel(id)==2
    name1=str(1:id(1)-1)
    name2=str(id(1)+1:id(2)-1)
else
    name1=str(1:id(1)-1)
    name2=str(id(1)+1:end)
end
If you do not want to save whatever is within the curly brackets as units, then remove those from the first expression.
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