Help me please with StringRegExpReplace

[yoinkster]

Hey guys,

I think this will just be a quick one but I can't figure it out. What I'd like to do is pretty simple:

I want to take a string, find if has a substring of the format "character-character" and then replace it with "character - character". So I figured I'd need to use StringRegExpReplace. Here's what I have so far:

$string  = "first-second"
$string  = StringRegExpReplace($string, "[^\s]-[^\s]"," - ")

and this gives me, unsurprisingly, "firs - econd" and I know why it does that, but I can't figure out how to make it return "first - second"

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

AC.

[MrMitchell]

Something like this:

$string  = StringRegExpReplace($string, "([^\s])-([^\s])","\1 - \2")

Edit: Nevermind I have the wrong idea

Edited April 5, 2011 by MrMitchell

[Aktonius]

Something like this:

$string  = StringRegExpReplace($string, "([^\s])-([^\s])","\1 - \2")

Edit: Nevermind I have the wrong idea

Think you have right idea

[MrMitchell]

Looking at what you were trying to do, this works:

$input  = "first-second"
ConsoleWrite($input & @CRLF)
$output = StringRegExpReplace($input, "-"," - ")
ConsoleWrite($output & @CRLF)

But it could get more complicated if it's not a straight up replace all hypens with "space hyphen space...actually could just use StringReplace() instead lol

Edited April 5, 2011 by MrMitchell

[yoinkster]

Something like this:

$string  = StringRegExpReplace($string, "([^\s])-([^\s])","\1 - \2")

Edit: Nevermind I have the wrong idea

This is exactly what I wanted, thank you

Looking at what you were trying to do, this works:

$input  = "first-second"
ConsoleWrite($input & @CRLF)
$output = StringRegExpReplace($input, "-"," - ")
ConsoleWrite($output & @CRLF)

There are more complicated ways...

This would have worked yes, but I didn't want end up having for example "first - second" (one space) becoming "first - second" (two spaces) hence wanting to find a not-space character Edited April 5, 2011 by yoinkster

[MrMitchell]

The thing is according to the help file it would be \0 and \1 instead of \1 and \2, but no matter what I did I didn't get expected results. I don't have much experience with these haha

(Another) Edit: I guess \1 and \2 is what you want, cuz \0 is the entire thing then \1 and \2 are the first and second set of parentheses.

Edited April 5, 2011 by MrMitchell

[yoinkster]

Ah ok, that makes sense, thanks for the explanation. One day I'll learn these things properly instead of just bodging it all the time!

[GEOSoft]

Also it's a good idea to use $1 And $2 instead of \1 and \2 for some rather complex reasons.

Also look in my signature for an app that will allow you to test SREs and become more familiar with them.