I have a big chunk of text I am scanning through and I am searching with a regex that is prefixed by some text.
var1 = textchunk.match(/thedata=(\d{6})/)
My result from var1 would return something like:
thedata=123456
How do I only return the number part of the search so in the example above just 123456 without taking var1 and then stripping thedata= off in a line below
If you expect just one match in the string, you may use your own code and access the captures property and get the first item (since the data you need is captured with the first set of unescaped parentheses that form a capturing group):
textchunk.match(/thedata=(\d{6})/).captures.first
See this IDEONE demo
If you have multiple matches, just use scan:
textchunk.scan(/thedata=(\d{6})/)
NOTE: to only match thedata= followed with exactly 6 digits, add a word boundary:
/thedata=(\d{6})\b/
^^
or a lookahead (if there can be word chars after 6 digits other than digits):
/thedata=(\d{6})(?!\d)/
^^^^^^
▶ textchunk = 'garbage=42 thedata=123456'
#⇒ "garbage=42 thedata=123456"
▶ textchunk[/thedata=(\d{6})/, 1]
#⇒ "123456"
▶ textchunk[/(?<=thedata=)\d{6}/]
#⇒ "123456"
The latter uses positive lookbehind.
