Regular expressions, an example

Why regular expressions are your friend. This is written in Stata but applies to any language where regular expressions exist.


Original version
if length("`qx'")==3 { /*ex: 5q0*/
local a = substr("`qx'", 1, 1)
local b = substr("`qx'", 3, 1)
}
else if substr("`qx'", 2, 1) == "q" & length("`qx'")==4 { /*ex: 5q20*/
local a = substr("`qx'", 1, 1)
local b = substr("`qx'", 3, 2)
}
else if substr("`qx'", 3, 1) == "q" & length("`qx'")==4 { /*ex: 10q5*/
local a = substr("`qx'", 1, 2)
local b = substr("`qx'", 4, 1)
}
else if length("`qx'")==5 { /*ex: 10q20*/
local a = substr("`qx'", 1, 2)
local b = substr("`qx'", 4, 2)
}


Regular expression version
foreach q in `qx' {
local a = regexr("`q'","q.+","")
local b = regexr("`q'",".+q","")
}