Is there a way to find any one of a set of characters using an excel formula - excel

Question

I have data that uses a range, or a less than symbol to denote 'between 0 and number'. But multiple characters are used for the same purpose.
It looks like below (first two columns), plus a column showing the results I want:
Country
Average hotdog consumption
Desired output
Madeupaland
10-200
105
Exampledesh
50—1000
525
Republic of Notreal
<1000
500
Inventia
≤5000
2500
Plus many rows where the data in the second column is purely numerical and doesn't need finessing into a number
I can use this formula to calculate the midpoint where there is a range:
=IFERROR(AVERAGE(LEFT(C2,FIND("–",C2)-1),RIGHT(C2, LEN(C2)-FIND("–",C2))), A2)
But they only covers one kind of dash(- and not —). Similarly, if I want to halve the numbers in rows with < and ≤ I'd need to replicate a formula there.
Is there a way of finding multiple different characters from a set? My understanding is that find looks for the whole string of characters. substitute is a work around, but I'd have to substitute every different value in the 'character set'.
In regex this would just be [-—].
I'm using Excel 2013 if that matters

Answer 1

It's not a perfect solution but you can try the following. This replaces those patterns of text with replacements representing which formula to use:
Create a Reference Table (I have made this in I1:K5)
|Pattern |Pattern Name |Substitution Rule |
|------- |------------ |----------------- |
|— |double dash |/2+0.5* |
|- |dash |/2+0.5* |
|< |lt |0.5* |
|≤ |lte |0.5* |
In your third column enter the following array formula (Using Ctrl + Shift + Enter to confirm)
=IF(ISNUMBER(B2),B2,"'="&SUBSTITUTE(B2,INDEX($I$2:$I$5,MIN(IF(ISNUMBER(FIND($I$2:$I$5,B2)),ROW($I$2:$I$5)-1,99))),INDEX($K$2:$K$5,MIN(IF(ISNUMBER(FIND($I$2:$I$5,B2)),ROW($I$2:$I$5),99)-1))))
Copy your third column and past values into a fourth column
Replace all the ''s with nothing to evaluate the expressions using Ctrl + H
My Result:
Country
Average hotdog consumption
Desired output
Formula Paste
Output after replacing 's
Madeupaland
10-200
105
'=10/2+0.5*200
105
Exampledesh
50—1000
525
'=50/2+0.5*1000
525
Republic of Notreal
<1000
500
'=0.5*1000
500
Inventia
≤5000
2500
'=0.5*5000
2500