replace

replace() Function

• Introduced in version 1.3b48

Returns the string with the occurrences of a pattern replaced by the specified value. If the number of times to perform the replacement is not specified then all occurrences of the pattern are replaced. Pattern can be a regular expression. This means if the pattern string contains any regular expression special characters they must be escaped.

Usage

replace(str, pattern, value)

replace(str, pattern, value, times)

Example

Example 1

    [r: replace("This is a test", " ", "-")]
    [r: replace("This is a test", " ", "-", 2)]

Returns:

   This-is-a-test
   This-is-a test

Example 2
This is useful for search+replace of any string you feed to replace() that might have regex codes in it like parenthesis:

    [r: tString = "is (a) t"]
    [r: replace("This is (a) test", "\\Q" + tString + "\\E", "-")]

Returns:

   This-est

Example 3

    [r: name = replace("wolph 5","(.*?) [0-9]+","\$1 42")]

returns:

   wolph 42

The $ normally means to match end-of-line, but only when it's at the end of the pattern. In this case, it's at the beginning of the pattern. And that means if the character immediately following is a digit (such as $1), those characters are replaced by the source string matched by the corresponding set of parentheses in the regular expression.

Example 4
Note that multiple .* in the search string correspond with multiple $#:

  [h:lastPath = [{"x":1,"y":0},{"x":1,"y":1},{"x":1,"y":2}]]
  [r:result = replace(lastPath, '\\{"x":(.*?),"y":(.*?)\\}', '"X\$1Y\$2"')]

returns:

["X1Y0","X1Y1","X1Y2"]