Autohotkey regex exclude part of string

Question

Using Autohotkey, I need to exclude a part of a string, while still writing the first and last part of it. I'll explain. Given the String:

GSM NWS\\TOP N Pool 1\\1. TOP N Pool 1 Rank :

GSM NWS\\TOP N Pool 1\\1. TOP N Pool 1 BCCH :

GSM NWS\\TOP N Pool 1\\1. TOP N Pool 1 BSIC :

I Need to extract only the parts from " 1. " until " : ", excluding the " TOP N Pool 1 " part. Thus, the wanted string should be:

1. Rank
2. BCCH
3. BSIC

I've been around this question for quite a while now, and I've used RegExMatch:

RegExMatch(A_LoopField,  "\d+\.(.*?)\[\d\]", fields%lineCount%)

This RegEx is not excluding that middle string I want to leave out.

Any ideas?

PS: I'm relatively new to this language, and to the Regular Expression usage as well...please forgive if i'm making any basic mistake here.

Thank you all.

Answer 1

You can use capturing groups, like in regex:

(\d\.).+\d\s(\w+)\s:

parts in parentheses capture text, which you can use afterward, using $1 , $2 , etc. Here $1 is for (\\d\\.) which captures for example: 1. , and $2 for (\\w+) which should capture Rank . So I suppose (as I don't have a background in AHK) you should be able to do something like:

NewStr := RegExReplace("GSM NWS\TOP N Pool 1\1. TOP N Pool 1 Rank :", "(\d\.).+\d\s(\w+)\s:", "$1$2")

and the result should be: 1.Rank

Look here how regex works: DEMO