MATLAB Programming Fundamentals - MathWorks

Description of each segment Pattern

Dot (period) character .

com or net (com|net)

Assembling these patterns into one character vector gives you the complete expression:

email = '[a-z_]+@[a-z]+\.(com|net)';

Step 3 — Call the Appropriate Search Function

In this step, you use the regular expression derived in Step 2 to match an email address

for one of the friends in the group. Use the regexp function to perform the search.

Here is the list of contact information shown earlier in this section. Each person's record

occupies a row of the contacts cell array:

contacts = { ...

'Harry 287-625-7315 Columbus, OH [email protected]'; ...

'Janice 529-882-1759 Fresno, CA [email protected]'; ...

'Mike 793-136-0975 Richmond, VA [email protected]'; ...

'Nadine 648-427-9947 Tampa, FL [email protected]'; ...

'Jason 697-336-7728 Montrose, CO [email protected]'};

This is the regular expression that represents an email address, as derived in Step 2:

email = '[a-z_]+@[a-z]+\.(com|net)';

Call the regexp function, passing row 2 of the contacts cell array and the email

regular expression. This returns the email address for Janice.

regexp(contacts{2}, email, 'match')

ans =

1×1 cell array

{'[email protected]'}

MATLAB parses a character vector from left to right, “consuming” the vector as it goes. If

matching characters are found, regexp records the location and resumes parsing the

character vector, starting just after the end of the most recent match.

Make the same call, but this time for the fifth person in the list:

Regular Expressions