REPLACE ER function

The REPLACE function returns the specified text string as a String value after all or part of it has been replaced with another string.

Syntax

REPLACE (text, pattern, replacement, regular expression flag)

Arguments

text: String

The valid path of a data source of the String type.

pattern: String

If the regular expression flag argument is FALSE, this argument contains the text that must be replaced.

If the regular expression flag argument is TRUE, this argument contains a regular expression that defines both a search pattern and the replacement text.

replacement: String

If the regular expression flag argument is FALSE, this argument contains the text to use as a replacement.

If the regular expression flag argument is TRUE, this argument isn't used.

regular expression flag: Boolean

A Boolean value that indicates whether a regular expression is used to do the replacement.

Return values

String

The resulting text value.

Usage notes

If the regular expression flag argument is TRUE, this function returns the specified string after it has been changed by applying the regular expression that is specified by the pattern argument. The regular expression is used to find the characters that must be replaced.

If the regular expression flag argument is FALSE, this function returns the specified string after the set of characters that are defined in the pattern argument have been replaced by characters of the replacement argument.

Example 1

REPLACE ("+1 923 456 4971", "[^0-9]", "", true) applies a regular expression that removes all non-numeric symbols, and it returns "19234564971".

Example 2

REPLACE ("abcdef", "cd", "GH", false) replaces the pattern "cd" with the string "GH" and returns "abGHef".

Additional resources

Text functions