Splitting Data Field - Regex

[taylor1]

I have a data field that contains a person’s name (firstname lastname). Inside a certain workflow, I’m attempting to only pull that person’s first name into a custom state by referencing the current datatype’s>Customer Name:extract with regex:First Item

this is using the pattern: \w+

However, although the string I’m using seems to work fine in a regex simulator, it’s not working for me at all.

I’m not very familiar with regex (my first day trying it out), so perhaps someone can direct me to some resource or give advice?
Thanks!

[taylor1]

Update: It actually does work if i set it to it’s own custom state. - Right now I’m trying to append the extracted data on the end of a text (:append), and when I do so, it erases all previous text, instead of appending it.

Additonally, if that text field only has one word (lastname), it appears to print it twice (lastnamelastname)