What is wrong with this Regular Expression? - regex

Question

I am beginner and have some problems with regexp.
Input text is : something idUser=123654; nick="Tom" something
I need extract value of idUser -> 123456
I try this:
//idUser is already 8 digits number
MatchCollection matchsID = Regex.Matches(pk.html, #"\bidUser=(\w{8})\b");
Text = matchsID[1].Value;
but on output i get idUser=123654, I need only number
The second problem is with nick="Tom", how can I get only text Tom from this expresion.

Answer 1

you don't show your output code, where you get the group from your match collection.
Hint: you will need group 1 and not group 0 if you want to have only what is in the parentheses.

Answer 2

.*?idUser=([0-9]+).*?
That regex should work for you :o)

Answer 3

Here's a pattern that should work:
\bidUser=(\d{3,8})\b|\bnick="(\w+)"
Given the input string:
something idUser=123654; nick="Tom" something
This yields 2 matches (as seen on rubular.com):
First match is User=123654, group 1 captures 123654
Second match is nick="Tom", group 2 captures Tom
Some variations:
In .NET regex, you can also use named groups for better readability.
If nick always appears after idUser, you can match the two at once instead of using alternation as above.
I've used {3,8} repetition to show how to match at least 3 and at most 8 digits.
API links
Match.Groups property
This is how you get what individual groups captured in a match

Answer 4

Use look-around
(?<=idUser=)\d{1,8}(?=(;|$))
To fix length of digits to 6, use (?<=idUser=)\d{6}(?=($|;))