Caché MultiValue Basic Reference
CONVERT
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Replaces single characters in a string.
Synopsis
CONVERT charsout TO charsin IN string
The
CONVERT statement edits the value of
string by replacing all instances of single characters in
charsout with single characters from
charsin.
CONVERT performs a character-for-character substitution. Matching of characters is case-sensitive.
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To replace all instances of a character in a string with another character, specify the character to be replaced in
charsout and the replacement character in
charsin. For example, to replace all instances of the # character with the * character in
mystring:
CONVERT "#" TO "*" IN mystring
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To replace all instances of a list of single characters with corresponding other single characters, specify those characters to be replaced in
charsout and the corresponding replacement characters in
charsin. 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" TO "ABCD" IN mystring
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To both replace some single characters and remove others, specify those characters to be replaced or removed in
charsout. First specify those to be replaced, then those to be removed. Specify the corresponding replacement characters in
charsin, 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 "+#" TO "&" IN mystring
The value of
charsout and
charsin 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
charsout contains more characters than
charsin, the unpaired characters are deleted from
string. If
charsin contains more characters than
charsout, 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.
The following example illustrates use of the
CONVERT statement 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"
CONVERT "#" TO CHAR(253) IN cities
PRINT cities