How to extract "this text" between specific characters: 1) this text 1)

Question

I have a text file that has thousands of questions and blanks for the answer, like this:

1) This is the first question 1)______

2) This is the second question 2)______

3)...

What I want to do is to extract the questions, and put them in a spreadsheet (I'm going to end up putting them in a database). I tried reading through Mathematica's Working with Strings page, but I couldn't figure out how to do it! Can someone please let me know how to do this? Thanks!

Answer 1

I'll use a slightly modified example:

str = "1) This is the first question 1)______

 2) This is the second question 2)______

 ...

 10) This is the tenth question 10)______"

One can use either StringExpression[] or RegularExpression[] in StringCases[] for this; here's how:

StringTrim /@ StringCases[str,
                          n : DigitCharacter .. ~~ ")" ~~ s__ ~~ n_ ~~ ")" :> s]

or

StringTrim /@ StringCases[str, RegularExpression["(\\d+\\))(.+)\\1"] -> "$2"]

which should both yield {"This is the first question", "This is the second question", "This is the tenth question"}.