Replace

The Replace function uses Java regular expressions to replace a substring of a specified string.

Note: To replace a backslash character (\) in a string, you must escape the character twice in the expression, resulting in a string with four backslash characters (\\\\). For example, to replace the substring first\second in a string, you must specify it as first\\\\second.

Syntax

The Replace function has the following syntax:

String = Replace(Expression, Pattern, Substitution, MaxNum)

Parameters

The Replace function has the following parameters.

Table 1. Replace function parameters
Parameter	Format	Description
`Expression`	String	String that contains the substring to be replaced.
`Pattern`	String	Regular expression that matches the substring to be replaced.
`Substitution`	String	String to substitute for the substring.
`MaxNum`	Integer	Maximum number of replacements to perform.

Return value

The resulting string.

Example 1

The following example shows how to replace a substring in a string.

MyString = "New York";
Pattern = "York";
Substitution = "Jersey";
MyReplace = Replace(MyString, Pattern, Substitution, 1);
Log(MyReplace);

This example prints the following message to the policy log:

Parser Log: New Jersey

Example 2

The following example shows how to replace whitespace in a string.

MyString = "New York City";
Pattern = "\\s";
Substitution = "_";
MyReplace = Replace(MyString, Pattern, Substitution);
Log(MyReplace);

This example prints the following message to the policy log:

Parser Log: New_York_City

Example 3

The following example shows how to replace all digits in a string.

MyString = "2 hours and 3 days";
Pattern = "[0-9]";
Substitution = "six";
MyReplace = Replace(MyString, Pattern, Substitution);
Log(MyReplace);

This example prints the following message to the policy log:

Parser Log: six hours and six days

Example 4

The following example shows how to replace a special character in a string by escaping the regular expression pattern.

MyString = "SELECT * FROM TABLE";
Pattern = "\*";
Substitution = "ID";
MyReplace = Replace(MyString, Pattern, Substitution);
Log(MyReplace);

This example prints the following message to the policy log:

Parser log: SELECT ID FROM TABLE