Replace function

The Replace function replaces individual characters with other individual characters.

The replacement is done at the individual character level and not the string level. Every occurrence of a character is replaced with specified replacement character as shown in the following example:
  • list of characters to be replaced is equal to 'abc'
  • list or replacement characters is equal to 'ABC'
  • input string is equal to 'aWWWbYYYYcPPPPabc'

The result string is equal to ''AWWWBYYYYCPPPPABC' because the replacement is done at the character level - every character is replaced. (If the replacement was done at the string level the resulting string would be equal to 'aWWWbYYYYcPPPPABC'.)

Parameter: input

The string to search for characters to replace. The value for this parameter can be provided by a source node, the result of another function, or a value you specify.

Parameter: fromChars

A list of the character or characters to be replaced. If you need to replace several characters, they should be listed without any separation. The value for this parameter can be provided by a source node, the result of another function, or a value you specify.

Parameter: toChars

A list of character or characters to use as replacements. List the replacement characters in this parameter in the same order as characters to be replaced in the fromChars parameter because the first character from the fromChars parameter is replaced by the first character in toChars parameter and so on. For more information, see Example 2. The value for this parameter can be provided by a source node, the result of another function, or a value you specify.
Note: You can not directly replace a single character with an empty string because the toChars parameter cannot equal a empty string - a string with no characters. For a workaround, see Example 3.

Returns: string

The result of replacing all occurrences of characters in the second parameter (fromChars) that are found in the first parameter (input) with the matching characters in the third parameter (toChars).

Example 1

This example shows a simple one-to-one character replacement as shown in the following figure:

The run-time result of running this function is the following string:

A list of chArActers

All lowercase a characters are replace with uppercase A characters.
Note: In this example, the input parameter is hardcoded to a specific value. Typically this value is supplied by a source node in a map.

Example 2

In this example, the first character from the fromChars parameter is replaced by the first character of the toChars parameter, the second character from the fromChars parameter is replaced by the second character of the toChars parameter, and so on. The replacement of multiple characters is shown in the following figure:

In this example, the non-numeric characters (specified at the end of the fromChars parameter) are removed from the phone number string. All the numeric characters are replaced with the same numeric character; for example, the 1 character is replaced by the 1 character. The other non-numeric characters at the end of the fromChars do not have a replacement character specified in the toChars, so they are removed from the returned string.

The run-time result of running this function is the following string:

000238882349940
Note: In this example, the input parameter is hardcoded to a specific value. Typically this value is supplied by a source node in a map.

Example 3

This example shows a workaround to the limitation that you cannot replace a single character with an empty string. This limitation exists because the toChars parameter cannot be set to an empty string - a string with no characters. You can workaround this limitation by supplying a dummy character like a hyphen (-) that is not found in the input parameter. For example, you could specify the following values for the parameters of the Replace function as shown in the following figure:

In this example, the input parameter is equal to '1 2 3' (1, space, 2, space, 3), the fromChars parameter is equal to '- ' (hyphen, space), and the toChars parameter is equal to '-' (hyphen). During run time, the Replace function with these values strips the spaces from input parameter and the run-time result is the following string:

123

Attention: When you specify the strings in the Value field of the Function Properties dialog box, do not enter the quotes. Enter just the hyphen and the space and not the quote characters.
Note: In this example, the input parameter is hardcoded to a specific value. Typically this value is supplied by a source node in a map.