using a charlist with instr 2

[JesOakley]

To be honest, I can't believe I've not been able to find the answer to this question either in Tek-Tips or on the net, but I can't, so I am looking for the Tek-Tips experts to put me straight!
I simply want to find out if a string contains any of some specified characters. I have tried

If InStr(1, strWholeRec, "[!0-9. ]", vbBinaryCompare) <> 0 Then

against a data-line of "82103 100j000000002" expecting the lowercase 'j' to trigger the If, but it isn't doing so.
Can anyone advise on how to achieve this?
Thanks in advance

 

[PHV]

Use the Like operator:
If strWholeRec Like "*[!0-9. ]*" Then

Hope This Helps, PH.
FAQ219-2884
FAQ181-2886

 

[Remou]

You may find regular expressions useful if your lines get any more complicated. Here are a few notes on RegEx.

'[URL unfurl="true"]http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms974570.aspx[/URL]
Dim objRegEx As RegExp
Set objRegEx = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
objRegEx.IgnoreCase = True
objRegEx.Global = True

'This is a sample string, the line would go here
strText = "q@12""£c" 

'Find anything not a-z, 0-9
objRegEx.Pattern = "[^a-z0-9]"

'Replace with a dash, "" is fine too. 
strOut = objRegEx.Replace(strText, "-")

http://lessthandot.com

 

[JesOakley]

Thank you PHV. Absolutely pin-pointed the solution and extremely quickly (unlike this response - doh).
And thanks Remou too; I shall investigate regular expressions too.
Both