Hugo,

Good catch! AFAIK number and quality should be separated by a letter. Otherwise you're right, there is no way to separate them <g>

>Naomi,
>
>All things are optional? I think it is very unlikely you will be able to retrieve anything from it then <g>
>
>for example given this
>
>E4604 (Meant as Color, no Type, 3 digits for number, No Stone, 1 digit for Quality and no color quality), you will have hard time figuring it out!
>
>>Hi everybody,
>>
>>I have a character string representing Style which consists of the following portions:
>>
>>Color (1 letter with - or without -) Type (one or 2 letters) Number portion (could be any number but usually no more than 5 digits and not less than 2) then Stone (1 letter) then quality (number) then color quality (1 letter), e.g. for example:
>>W-4568S5B
>>E460D4
>>E94E
>>
>>Now, all these portions are optional except for number portion. My task is to get the number portion first, then try to search, if we have a file with the same number, same first portion, same stone (if it was present), different quality. Then if there are no files with the same stone, I need to do other string manipulations.
>>
>>Can you help me to get Number portion first?
>>
>>Thanks in advance.