I would suggest by starting checking out the StringSearcher. You could use two, one to remove Floor: and the other Slab:

Yes, it seems to be a case where you can use regular expressions effectively and I agree that the StringSearcher would be a good starting point. If you have been familiar with regular expressions already, however, I think the StringReplacer would be an elegant solution to remove the leading "Floor:" or "Slab:" from each string value. The parameters would be:

• Attributes: type
• Text to Match: ^(Floor:|Slab:)?(.*)$
• Replacement Text: \\2
• Use Regular Expressions: yes

fantastic. It worked a dream!

Thanks so much.

Hi Again,

Can I ask, when I have a field like

Assembled Stair:

It replaces the Assembled, but not the Stair:

I have tried putting a . between the Assembled.Stair

To replace a full string and not one word, is there something I need to do perhaps?

Thanks again for your help

Chris

Hi Natalie,

This is what Im using and all but the last part works perfectly.

The Assembled Stair: returns Stair: and I think because of the space, so Ive tried \\s. It works OK with the regex tester but I doesnt replace the string in FME.

Do you think this is the best way to remove this also? I may have up to 10 strings to replace.

^(Structural_Columns_UC-Univeral_Column:|Floor:|Railing:|Basic Wall:|Assembled\\sStair:)

Thanks for your help.

Chris

You may be better off using a string pair replacer here with the Replacement pairs syntax something like

"Assembled Stair:" "" Floor: "" Railing: ""

I guess that the requirement is to remove the leading part until the colon if the original string contains a colon. If so, the StringReplaceer with this regular expression could work too.

^(.*:)?(.*)$