First, regexp is not the right tool for parsing/analyzing natural language.

However if you only expect sentences conform with certain predefined pattern/structure, then regexp (or some simple snippet) would be quite useful to analyze/parse those sentences. If all of your sentences are as simple as what you showed us above, I don't even think you need "multiple if's". It is all about understand and define the pattern/structure.

In your case, you may come up with those rules:

• subject is a stream of chars;
• object is a stream of chars (number?);
• A "sentence" is subject + some form of be verb + object;
• A "sentence" ends with "and", ".", ", and", etc.

Then it is not difficult for you to come up with a short snippet or a regexp to parse your "sentences" into a collection of "subject-object" pairs.

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