replaceText

Searches for a regular expression and replaces the portions that match the regular expression.

# Metadata

Platforms: desktop, server, mobile OS: mac, windows, linux, ios, android Introduced: 1.0 Security:

# Syntax

replaceText(stringToChange, matchExpression, replacementString)

# Params

- stringToChange : A container reference or literal value. - matchExpression : A regular expression. - replacementString : A container reference or literal value.

# Examples

put replaceText("malformed","mal","well") -- returns "wellformed"

-- change return-delimited text to comma-delimited put replaceText(field "Stats",return,comma) into field "Stats"

put replaceText("colour or color","colou?r","culler") -- returns "culler or culler"

-- escape RegEx metacharacter using backslash put replaceText ( "ABC|DEV" , "\|" , CR )

# Description

Use the replaceText function to search for and replace text that matches a particular pattern.

The replaceText function replaces all the occurrences of the matchExpression with the replacementString. If more than one matching substring is found, the replaceText function replaces all of them.

The replaceText function is not as fast as the replace command, but is more flexible because you can search for any text that matches a regular expression.

The stringToChange and matchExpression are always case-sensitive, regardless of the setting of the caseSensitive property. (If you need to make a case-insensitive comparison, use "(?i)" at the start of the matchExpression to make the match case-insensitive.)

>*Note:* A number of characters in regular expressions have special > meanings and these need to be 'escaped' using backslashes ("\"). For example > period (".") matches any character, so in order to replace period characters > using a regular expression use "\.", to replace vertical bar characters ("|") > use "\|" and so on. > For more information on regular expressions see the Perl documentation > at http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html .

# Tags

text processing,

# See

- **keyword:** string - **property:** caseSensitive - **command:** replace, filter - **glossary:** command, regular expression, property