Regular Expression works in my regex software but not FME?

(^\\s{12})([a-zA-Z\\s]*)

In FME 2016.1 the regex ^\\s{12}[A-Za-z ]+$ (note there's a space behind the z) sort of does the trick, but it also matches lines with more than 12 spaces, which the quick reference seems to apply shouldn't happen.

Please note that if we do track down a regex that finds "Hanover Housing Association" it'll also pick up the 3 lines below it, they also match the pattern.

Hi @james_rutter, your expression definitely matches the text, but you need to define subexpression (group)  if you want to extract a part with using StringSearcher. e.g.

^ {12}([A-Z][a-z].*)

Then, specify a list name to the "Subexpression Matches List Name parameter", in order to store matched part.

There are many possible expressions, but the AttributeTrimmer might be a simpler way if you just need to remove leading spaces from the input line.

(?<=^\\s{12})([a-zA-Z]{1}[a-zA-Z\\s]*) should match just the text without the spaces at the front, but only where the spaces exist in front.

This will only work in FME 2016 as look behind wasn't supported earlier.

I would then probably use attributecreator with enable adjacent feature attributes to determine the first instance (i'm presuming you're reading with a text reader with each line a separate feature)

Having said that, surely there's bound to be someone who has a company name that includes a digit?

So probably safer to use (?<=^\\s{12})([a-zA-Z0-9]{1}[a-zA-Z0-9\\s]*)