The M-function Text.BetweenDelimiters does what it says and returns the text between 2 delimiters in the query editor of Power BI and Power Query. But irrespective of its optional arguments you can use to select specific occurrences, it will always only return one string found.
Problem
How to retrieve all occurrences of strings between in a text field like here for example: I’d like to get a list that contains “Python” and “R”:
“Meanwhile I prefer +Python!+ to +R!+”
Meaning all strings found between the delimiters “+” and “!+”.
Solution
This function will return the desired list:
How it works
In the first 3 mandatory parameters you fill the text to be analysed and the delimiters between the strings shall be extracted.
But there is also a 4th optional parameter that you will only have to use in the rare case that your 1st delimiter contains an “°”: My function works on the principle that a split by the 1st delimiter will actually just split the text on the 1st delimiters position. Now, when that string is also included in the 2nd delimiter, the text would also be split at the position of the 2nd delimiter. To prevent this, I introduced a Dummy that replaces the occurrence of the 1st delimiter-string within the 2nd delimiter. So in the case above, the 2nd delimiter “!+” will be replaced to “!°” before the splitting starts.
So far so good … BUT: If the 1st delimiter would actually be “°” instead of “+” here, my function would not return correct results. In that case, you’d have to fill in a value in the 4th optional parameter that is not contained in your current delimiters. So I tried to choose a Dummy-sign that will hopefully very seldom be used as the delimiter and you will never have to use this option 😉
The file to download contains the function and a query-version that allows you to follow each step if you want to see how the function is built.
Link to file: TextBetweenDelimitersOccAll.zip
Enjoy & stay queryious 😉
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