Function: replaceFirst()

Replace the first occurrence of a pattern with a replacement string.

Syntax

replaceFirst(listToCheck, findPattern, replacementString)

Examples

replaceFirst(in.fileName, "[0-9]{8}", "")

replaceFirst() removes the first string of 8 digits from file names contained in the attribute in.fileName.

If in.fileName = "20060712file-proc20070103-1263", this returns "file-proc20070103-1263".

replaceFirst(in.fileName, "file_([0-9A-Za-z]+)\\.txt", "$1")

replaceFirst() matches alphanumeric characters between "file_" and ".txt", and replaces the whole string with this value, if a match is made. In this way, a part or parts of the input string can be extracted. If in.fileName = "file_teamA.txt", the result of this expression will be "teamA".

See Also

• replaceAll
• matches