Using a regex to identify EQUIPMENTID numbers - VBA

If I understand your issue, you need to get the strings which starts with substring provided and contains numbers.

You could try the following regex.

^(?:BLM|SUB|CVR|FDR|SMP|CRU|HXC|ATS|AFD|FTS|DIX|DIT|FIT|FCV|KV|FV|CHU|PLW|BCR|DEC|CTR|CWR|V|DSS|PNL|MTR|LUB|LAU|CCL|DBB|TNK|THK|PIT)[0-9_-]+

Details:

1. ^: start of string
2. ?:: non capturing group
3. (?:BLM|SUB|CVR|FDR|SMP|CRU|HXC|ATS|AFD|FTS|DIX|DIT|FIT|FCV|KV|FV|CHU|PLW|BCR|DEC|CTR|CWR|V|DSS|PNL|MTR|LUB|LAU|CCL|DBB|TNK|THK|PIT): list of prefixes.

Demo

It isn't 100% clear what you're intending to do because:

1. The test data you've supplied is comprised wholly of expected matches
2. The expected output is unclear. Although this largely relays back to point 1!

However, there are many ways of getting the information you require. They all depend on how your source data is organised though...

//  Example test data 1:

AFD11122 SOME OTHER RANDOM DATA
WDC11121_22 SOME OTHER RANDOM DATA

//  Example test Data 2:

SOME RANDOM DATA AFD11122 AND SOME MORE RANDOM DATA WDC11121_22 WITH SOME MORE

Assuming that the data is at the start of the string AND that you want to capture each string as a whole:

// Option 1
/^(.*?)\s/
 ^            : Start of string
  (.*?)       : Non-greedy capture group
       \s     : First space (first because the capture group was non-greedy)

// Option 2
/^([ABCDEFHIKLMNPRSTUVWX][ABCDEFHILMNRSTUVWX]?[BCDKLMPRSTUVWX]?[x\d]{5}[_\-\d]*)/i
 ^                                                                                    : Start of string
  (                                                                                   : Start of capture group
   [ABCDEFHIKLMNPRSTUVWX]                                                             : Capture any letter in character set
                         [ABCDEFHILMNRSTUVWX]?                                        : OPTIONALLY [?] capture any letter in character set
                                              [BCDKLMPRSTUVWX]?                       : OPTIONALLY [?] capture any letter in character set
                                                               [x\d]{5}               : Capture any number or x 5 times
                                                                       [_\-\d]*       : Capture any number, hyphen, or underscore until you reach a character not in the set
                                                                               )      : End of capture group
                                                                                 i    : FLAG - case insensitive

// Option 3
/^((?:AFD|BCR|BLM....TNK|V)[\d_\-]*)/i
 ^                                         : Start of string
  (                                        : Start of capture group
   (?:                                     : Start of non-capturing group
      AFD|BCR|BLM....TNK|V                 : List of prefixes separated with "|"
                          )                : End of non-capturing group
                           [\d_\-]*        : Capture any number, hyphen, or underscore until you reach a character not in the set
                                   )       : End of capture group
                                      i    : FLAG - case insensitive

// Option 4
/^([a-z]{1,3}[x\d]{5}[_\-\d]*)/i    :
 ^                                  : Start of string
  (                                 : Start of capture group
   [a-z]{1,3}                       : Capture any letter [range: a-z] 1 to 3 times {1,3}
             [x\d]{5}               : Capture any number [\d] or x [x] 5 times {5}
                     [_\-\d]*       : Capture any number, hyphen, or underscore until you reach a character not in the set
                             )      : End of capture group
                               i    : FLAG - case insensitive

Based on your updates to the main question I would stick with option 4 unless you specifically need to make sure that only the set prefixes are matched.

In the event that your data looks more like Example Data 2 then the above expressions will need to be altered accordingly; some examples below:

/([a-z]{1,3}[x\d]{5}[_\-\d]*)/i        : Remove the ^
/\b([a-z]{1,3}[x\d]{5}[_\-\d]*)/i      : Add a word boundary to the start of the expression
/[^a-z]([a-z]{1,3}[x\d]{5}[_\-\d]*)/i  : Start the expression with anything BUT a letter

How you alter it will depend on the data that you're searching through.

Updated RegEx based on latest question edits

/([a-z]{1,3}(?!xxxxx)[x\d]{5}(?!\d)[_\-\d]*)/ig

Try this:

[A-Z]{1,3}[\dX]{5}([_-])0?\d(\10?\d)?

This requires the separator to be the consistent, ie either both - or both _, by capturing the separator and using a back reference to it \1, although the second “pooled ID” is optional.

As far as I can tell, this matches all of your examples.