Hi guys,

I have this set of chemical names something like this:

12 chem1
1/2 chem2
(N+1) chem3
2M chem4
N chem5

[download]

What I want to do is write a function to process each word in turn and extract just its prefix... i.e. 12 or 1/2 or (N+1) etc. The prefixes are of course described by regular expressions (as it may be any number infront of a name, not just 12!), i.e... 

\d+
\d+\/\d+
\(N\+1\)
\d*[MN]

[download]

I just can't seem to write such a function, can anyone help?

Thanks, Arun

In reply to Regular Expression to find Word Prefixes by arunhorne

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