Handling spaces, commas, numbers and currency in a string

[Andrew Poulos]

I'm a novice with using regex. Could someone either direct me to where I
can find out more about it or help with the things I need to do:

- strip any leading and trailing spaces

- reduce multiple spaces to single spaces

- get the first number (integer) as a string from a string (with commas
being ignored) eg. 'ab1,234c5de' returns '1234'

- get the first number (real) as a string from a string (with commas
being ignored) eg. 'ab1,234.567c89de' returns '1234.567'


And the last one I need is a bit more difficult to describe. It's
getting a currency type value which I'm defining as a integer followed
by a decimal point which is followed by a maximum 2 digit integer. If
the value does not have a decimal point, two zeros and a point are added
to the value. If there's a decimal point, two zeros are added. If
there's a point and a single digit integer a trailing zero is added. If
there are more than two digits after the decimal point they are ignored.
If there's no integer before the decimal point a zero is added. Examples:

aaa$123bbb returns 123.00
aaa1,234.5888585bbb returns 1234.58
aaa.5bbb returns 0.50
aaa3.4.4.4.4 returns 3.40
aaaaa returns 0.00

I've being trying to do it using replace, working one condition at a
time, but each condition adds several lines and I'm only part way
through and the script is unyielding.

Andrew Poulos