How to check for the same delimiter multiple times? - excel

Question

I have an Excel sheet that contains strings and numbers. All the strings I am searching for have an underscore ("_"), which is my delimiter. However, some strings have the delimiter more than once.
For example:
text_in_00
text_in_01
text_out_00
text_out_01
Other strings with just one delimiter work beautifully. But here, with two delimiters, "in" and "out" are not being differentiated, due to the delimiter only being found once. How do I find EACH delimiter in a given string?
My goal with this code is to differentiate between ranges and copy and paste these different ranges into their own individual worksheets. Also, I cannot hard-code any cells or strings, as the string names are subject to change, as well as the size of the ranges.
My code:
'Dim arr As Variant
Dim i As Long
Dim filterRange As Range
Dim delimiterItem As String 'was variant
Dim a As Range
delimiterItem = "_"
Set filterRange = FindAll(Worksheets(newSheetName).UsedRange)
For i = filterRange.Rows.Count To 2 Step -1
'arr = Split(Cells(i, 1), delimiterItem)
'For j = LBound(arr) To UBound(arr)
If Split(filterRange.Cells(i, 1).Text, delimiterItem)(0) <> Split(filterRange.Cells(i - 1, 1).Text, delimiterItem)(0) Then
Range(filterRange.Cells(i, 1).EntireRow, filterRange.Cells(i, 1).EntireRow).Insert
End If
'Next j
Next i
Note: FindAll is another function in my code that finds the values I need to be looking at. Some strings don't contain any underscores ("_"), which are values I don't need. This function just filters out what I don't need and works great. I am focusing on the portion of code below the line: Set filterRange = FindAll(Worksheets(newSheetName).UsedRange))
Note: The commented out code was something I was trying, but gave the same result.
TLDR; How do I check for each instance of the delimiter? Thank you in advance for the help.

Answer 1

Use the following function to get a count of how many times Char appears in your string and then use a select case construct do do whatever, based on the count.
Public Function CountChars(ByVal Source As String, ByVal Char As String) As Long
CountChars = Len(Source) - Len(Replace(Source, Char, vbNullString))
End Function

Answer 2

Make a function that returns the Nth index of a substring inside another:
Public Function NthIndexOf(ByVal needle As String, ByVal haystack As String, ByVal n As Long) As Long
Dim currentN As Long
Dim currentIndex As Long
Do
currentIndex = InStr(currentIndex + 1, haystack, needle, vbTextCompare)
currentN = currentN + 1
Loop Until currentIndex = Len(haystack) Or currentN = n Or currentIndex = 0
NthIndexOf = currentIndex
End Function
Now you can get the NthIndexOf("_", "text_in_00", 2) and get 8. If you tried to get the 3rd index of "_", the output would be 0.
If you want the substring between each "delimiter", then you need to Split and then iterate the array. It's unclear what you intend to do with each substring though, but you should have all the tools you need to do whatever it is that you're doing now.

Answer 3

delimiterItem = "_"
Set filterRange = FindAll(Worksheets(newSheetName).UsedRange)
For i = filterRange.Rows.Count To 2 Step -1
If Split(InStrRev(filterRange.Cells(i, 1).Text, delimiterItem))(0) <> Split(InStrRev(filterRange.Cells(i - 1, 1).Text, delimiterItem))(0) Then
Range(filterRange.Cells(i, 1).EntireRow, filterRange.Cells(i, 1).EntireRow).Insert
End If
Next i