Parse text RegEx Issue

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Posted on by Zicco

Hi everyone.

There is an error in "Parse Text" block.

I was testing this block and get some problem on "Positions" output when I test it with multiple matches option.

I test it with a regular expression to get no matches and get "Positions = -1", but this variable output is empty (Positions = [] ).

Desktop. version 2.34.181.23193. Spanish language.

===Data input ===

Text Input:

B:\Users\siNaBEC\ <--- with a blank space at end of string to get NO Match
C:\Users\SiNaBEC
D:\Users\sinabec\
A:\Users\siNaBEC\
just another text

RegEx Code (to get No Matches)

.*\\xxx[\t\n\r\f\v]*(?=\n|$) <---Delete "xxx" to get 2 matches "D:\ and A:\ lines"

Input Position = 0

Only first match = False <--- Because I'm testing multiple matches

Insensitive Text = True

=== OUTPUTS ===

Matches = [] <---This is OK

Positions = [] <---THIS IS NOT OK, I expect a -1 value.

Does somebody has the Parse Text block issue... or it's my software version????

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Power Automate Desktop

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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When you use Parse text to return all matches and not just the first one, it generates an array instead of a single value. So, both %Positions% and %Matches% are arrays. And if there are no matches, instead of returning -1, it will return an empty array. This is the normal behavior of the action.
If you want to control for no matches, instead of checking if %Positions% equals to -1, check if it is empty or if %Positions.Count% equals 0. Both of these approaches will tell you Parse text returned no matches. Honestly, you can do the same with %Matches%, too. No need to use %Positions% at all here.
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Zicco 15 on at

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Hi... and sorry, I was on vacations trip.

I understand "Positions" is an array, but documentation says something different. So, I was at least expecting an array with one element and a value of "-1"...or something like that.

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Well, it seems like the documentation is a bit outdated. Not really surprising, to be honest.

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