CONVERT

Caché MultiValue Basic Reference

CONVERT

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Replaces single characters in a string.

Synopsis

CONVERT(remove,replace,string)

Arguments

remove	One or more characters to be removed and replaced. An expression that resolves to a string or numeric.
replace	One or more characters to be inserted in place of the corresponding characters in remove. An expression that resolves to a string or numeric.
string	The string in which character substitutions are made. An expression that resolves to a string or numeric. string may be a dynamic array.

Description

The CONVERT function edits the value of string by replacing all instances of each single character in remove with the corresponding single characters in replace and returning the resulting string. CONVERT performs a character-for-character substitution. Matching of characters is case-sensitive.

CONVERT can be used as follows:

To remove all instances of a character from a string, specify the character to be removed in remove and a null string in replace. For example, to remove the # character from mystring: CONVERT("#","",mystring)
To replace all instances of a character in a string with another character, specify the character to be replaced in remove and the replacement character in replace. For example, to replace all instances of the # character with the * character in mystring: CONVERT("#","*",mystring)
To replace all instances of a list of single characters with corresponding other single characters, specify those characters to be replaced in remove and the corresponding replacement characters in replace. For example, to replace all instances in mystring of the each lowercase letter a, b, c, and d with the corresponding uppercase letter: CONVERT("abcd","ABCD",mystring)
To both replace some single characters and remove others, specify those characters to be replaced or removed in remove. First specify those to be replaced, then those to be removed. Specify the corresponding replacement characters in replace, and nothing for the characters to be removed. For example, to replace all instances of + with &, and to remove all instances of # in mystring: CONVERT("+#","&",mystring)

The value of remove and replace can be a string or a numeric. If numeric, the value is converted to canonical form (plus sign, leading and trailing zeros removed) before performing the CONVERT operation.

If remove contains more characters than replace, the unpaired characters are deleted from the returned string. If replace contains more characters than remove, the unpaired characters are ignored and have no effect.

Note:

CONVERT performs single character one-for-one substitution for all instances in a string. The CHANGE function performs substring replacement, and can specify how many instances to replace and where to begin replacement.

The CONVERT statement and the CONVERT function perform the same operation, with the following difference: the CONVERT statement changes the supplied string; the CONVERT function returns a new string with the specified changes and leaves the supplied string unchanged.

Emulation

The order of the CONVERT arguments differs in different emulation modes. In Caché MVBasic, the order is remove,replace,string. In MultiValue emulation modes, the argument order is as follows:

remove,replace,string: for UniVerse, UniData, PICK, Prime, INFORMATION, PIOpen.
string,remove,replace: for jBASE, Reality, Ultimate, MVBase, D3, POWER95, IN2, R83.

Examples

The following example illustrates use of the CONVERT function in converting a string to a dynamic array by replacing the # character with a Value Mark level delimiter character:

cities="New York#Chicago#Boston#Los Angeles"
dynacities=CONVERT("#",CHAR(253),cities)
PRINT cities
PRINT dynacities