regsub, a built-in Tcl command, performs substitutions based on regular expression pattern matching.
regsub matches string against the regular expression exp, performing substitutions according to subSpec, and either returns the resulting string. If varName is given, the resulting string is stored in that variable and the number of substitutions is returned instead.
The substitution process can be modified through the use of switches, these being the supported ones:
These are all similar to those for [regexp]], except for -all which causes regsub to perform the replacement in as many non-overlapping places as possible.
One example of using regsub from Brent Welch's BOOK Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk is:
regsub -- {([^\.]*)\.c} file.c {cc -c & -o \1.o} ccCmd& is replaced by file.c, and \1 is replaced by file.
Recently on the Tcler's Wiki chat room, someone had the desire to converta string like this:
rand ||=> this is some text <=|| rand
to
rand ||=> some other text <=|| rand
set unique1 {\|\|=>}
set unique2 {<=\|\|}
set string {rand ||=> this is some text <=|| rand}
set replacement {some other text}
set new [regsub -- "($unique1) .* ($unique2)" $string "\\1$replacement\\2" string ]
puts $new
puts $stringThe regular expression metacharacters in $unique1 and $unique need to be quoted so they are not treated as metacharacters.
NOTE: assuming the above example is for some type of template system, remember that the expression is greedy and will not do what you expect for multiple instances of unique1 and unique2 For example:
left ||=> this is some text <=|| middle ||=> and some more text <=|| right
Will be converted to:
left ||=> some other text <=|| right
Everything between the first instance of unique1 and the last instance of unique2 will be thrown away.
AM 2003-10-07: I asked about a complicated substitution in the chatroom:
Here is the question:
I have a fixed substring that delimits a variable number of characters. Anything in between (including the delimiters) must be replaced by a repetition of another string. For example:
1234A000aadA12234 -> 1234BXBXBXBX12234
(A000aadA is 8 characters, my replacing string fits 4 times in that)
arjen: I do not think I can use some clever regexp to do this ... (note: things will always fit)
arjen: The regexp to identify the substring could be: {A[^A]*A}
arjen: But now to get the replacing string ...
CoderX2 easy... one sec
CoderX2
set string 1234A000aadA12234
set substring BX
regsub -all {(A[^A]*A)} $string {[string repeat $substring [expr {[string length "\1"] / [string length $substring]}]]} new_string
set new_string [subst $new_string](conversation edited to highlight this wonderful gem!)
AMG: The -all option interacts strangely with the * quantifier when no ^ anchor is used. Take this example:
regsub -all .* foo <&>
This returns <foo><>. First .* matches all the text (foo in this case), then it matches the empty string at the end of the text. Adding $ to the end of the pattern doesn't help. To fix, either lose the -all option (it's not desirable in this case), or add the ^ anchor to the beginning (prevents matching anything at end of string).
Has an -eval switch to regsub ever been suggested? It would apply in the above example, and some other common idioms, e.g., url-decoding:
regsub -all -eval {%([:xdigit:][:xdigit:]} $str {binary format H2 \1} strThe idea is that the replacement string gets eval-ed after expanding the \1 instead of just substituted in. To safely do this otherwise needs an extra call to regsub before (to protect existing []s) and a call to subst afterwards to do the evaluation.
-JR
DKF: Yes, and I mean to do something about it sometime (too many things to do, too little time). Meantime, try this:
proc regsub-eval {re string cmd} {
subst [regsub $re [string map {[ \\[ ] \\] $ \\$ \\ \\\\} $string] \[$cmd\]]
}
regsub-eval {%([:xdigit:][:xdigit:]} $str {binary format H2 \1}JH: Once upon a time I coded up regsub -eval in full in C (still have the patch around somewhere). I decided to not push it forward since it was actually slower than the full subst work-around. I believe this was due to the overhead of many small Tcl_Eval calls versus a one-time subst-pass that could be more effective. There are some newer Tcl_Eval* APIs to try and we should resuscitate this one.
AMG: If you're building up a regular expression that's supposed to match various fixed strings, you must backslash-quote any special characters in those strings. [string map] will do the job, but [regsub] will get you there with much less typing:
regsub -all {[][*+?{}()<>|.^$\\]} $string {\\&}Here's the [string map] version:
string map {\\ {\\} \] {\]} {[} {\[} * {\*} + {\+} ? {\?}
\{ {\{} \} {\}} ( {\(} ) {\)} < {\<} > {\>}
| {\|} . {\.} ^ {\^} {$} {\$}} $string