Consider this coding approach...

Dim Children() As String, Parent As String, X As Long
Parent = "Garbage text BAR garbage text FOO desired string 1 BAR " & _
"desired string 2 BAR desired string 3 BAR desired string " & _
"4 BAR desired string 5 BAR More Garbage Text"
Children = Split(Split(Replace(Parent, " BAR ", "BAR"), "FOO ")(1), "BAR")
'
' Let's see if it worked...
'
For X = 0 To UBound(Children) - 1
Debug.Print Children(X)
Next

Note: This code is dependent on the keyword "BAR" being the last word of the
Parent string (I can code around that if it can be the last word, but your
sample seems to indicate it won't be). Also, the code is dependent on the
keywords BAR and FOO always being in upper case as your example shows (I can
code around this also if this will not always be the case).

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"ker_01" wrote in message
...
Hi Rick!

In my source string, the 'FOO' string is only in the template once, right
before the first child string; I'm hoping that none of the 'child' strings
happen to contain it by chance, or else I'll be doing some hand-editing on
those records.

There are about 20-30 child strings per parent string I need to process;
BAR
is in the template at the end of each child string, so it occurs once
between
each child string and at the end of the last child string. Unfortunately,
BAR
also occurs once at the top of the template, which is what was giving me
issue #1 below.

Modified Example:
[start of file]
garbage text BAR garbage text FOO desired string 1 BAR desired string 2
BAR
desired string 3 BAR desired string 4 BAR desired string...30 BAR more
garbage text that does not include FOO or BAR
[end of file]

Thanks!
Keith


"Rick Rothstein" wrote:

I'd be interested in knowing what text is in the "(etc)" part of your
source
string. Can there be other FOO keywords? If so, do want the desired
strings
between them and any BAR keywords that may follow it?

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"ker_01" wrote in message
...

I have a long string, in the format

BAR garbage text FOO desired string 1 BAR desired string 2 BAR desired
string 3 BAR desired string 4 BAR (etc).

What I'd like to extract is:
desired string 1
desired string 2
desired string 3
desired string 4

I'm trying variations of re.Pattern = "FOO|BAR [\s\S]*?BAR "
but I'm having some problems.

(1) The first returned string returns
BAR garbage text FOO desired string 1 BAR
where I'd prefer to only start with
FOO desired string 1 BAR ... or better,
desired string 1

I can work around that manually, but I welcome any suggestions on how
to
fix
it.

(2) Each search 'consumes' the terminating string "BAR", causing it to
skip
every other string, giving me:
BAR garbage text FOO desired string 1 BAR
BAR desired string 3 BAR
BAR desired string 5 BAR

How do I force it to re-use the terminating string as the start string
of
the next part of the search?

(3) I'm not sure if I need it or not, but I tried using re.multiline =
True
just to be cautious, and I get a compile error "Method or data member
not
found". I do have a reference to Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions
1.0.
Do I need a different reference to enable multiline? Again, the strings
still
seem to be coming across ok (including across multiple lines), I'm just
surprised I don't need (and in fact, can't set) the multiline
parameter.

Thank you,
Keith