Parsing text

[mfrederickson]

I apologize in advance if this question has already been asked and answered. If it has, I am most likely demonstrating my lack of experience in not knowing what to properly search for. I am relatively new to regex. Here is my problem:

I have several records in my file that contain a three digit number (233, 252, 245, etc.) In the lines I am concerned about, they always appear between the ampersand:

& 232 &

& 252 &

So it's ampersand, space, three digit number, space and then ampersand.

How can I extract just the number from the string? I can't seem to find what I am looking for - I really do better with actual examples.....

Any assistance would be appreciated.....even if it's pointing me to documentation somewhere (I know RTFM...)

Thanks

[mfrederickson]

Thanks Vince - I'll give that a shot. I knew it couldn't be that complicated - just having a major brain fart...

[vincesesto]

Hey mfrederckson,

This should be pretty straight forward with a regex such as the following:
&\s(?P[^ ]+)\s&

If you could provide some more information on the actual logs you are searching through, as well as the context of your regex, eg; is it for a props.conf or a search, etc...I would be happy to assist further.

Regards Vince