How can I use regexextract function in Google Docs spreadsheets to get “all” occurrences of a string?

Question

My text string is in cell D2:

Decision, ERC Case No. 2009-094 MC, In the Matter of the Application for Authority to Secure Loan from the National Electrification         


        

Answer 1

You can use capture groups, which will cause regexextract() to return an array. You can use this as the cell result, in which case you will get a range of results, or you can feed the array to another function to reformat it to your purpose. For example:

regexextract( "abracadabra" ; "(bra).*(bra)" )

will return the array:

{bra,bra}

Another approach would be to use regexreplace(). This has the advantage that the replace is global (like s/pattern/replacement/g), so you do not need to know the number of results in advance. For example:

regexreplace( "aBRAcadaBRA" ; "[a-z]+" ; "..." )

will return the string:

...BRA...BRA