Regular Expression (Concept)

Regular expression (or "regex") is a way of finding information in a block of text. It is the primary method Grooper extracts and returns data from documents.

Using a standard syntax, a sequential line of characters is written to match a string of characters in the text. This line of characters written to match text is called a "pattern" and can potentially return multiple strings, not just one value. It will return any string of text matching the pattern.

This syntax can be used to match very specific strings of characters or written more generally to match several permutations of the pattern. For example, one can write a regular expression pattern to match a specific date or any date in a text block.