MATLAB Programming Fundamentals - MathWorks

To be more efficient, however, you can build a single phrase that applies to all of these

search terms:

Translate this phrase into a regular expression (to be explained later in this section) and

you have:

pattern = 'k(ilo)?m(eters)?(/|\sper\s)h(r|our)?';

Now locate one or more of the terms using just a single command:

text = ['The high-speed train traveled at 250 ', ...

'kilometers per hour alongside the automobile ', ...

'travelling at 120 km/h.'];

regexp(text, pattern, 'match')

ans =

1×2 cell array

{'kilometers per hour'} {'km/h'}

There are four MATLAB functions that support searching and replacing characters using

regular expressions. The first three are similar in the input values they accept and the

output values they return. For details, click the links to the function reference pages.

Function Description

regexp Match regular expression.

regexpi Match regular expression, ignoring case.

regexprep Replace part of text using regular expression.

regexptranslate Translate text into regular expression.

2 Program Components