Regular Expression Help

[GrahamRobbo]

Hi there,

can anyone help me with a regular expression.

I want to replace all delimiting commas in a CSV string with another character. The string contents look something like this...

1,10,Johnson,"Stores and Sales",High,10031984,paycycle1,"red,blue,green",full

...so what I want to change it to is this...

1|10|Johnson|"Stores and Sales"|High|10031984|paycycle1|"red,blue,green"|full

My problem is with the regex syntax. The closest I have got to is...

,(?![^"]*")

..but this produces the result...

1,10,Johnson,"Stores and Sales",High,10031984,paycycle1,"red,blue,green"|full

...as it only matches the commas after the last " delimited field.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers

Graham Robbo

[Former Member]

Hi,

Use

REPLACE ALL OCCURANCES OF ',' IN <variable> WITH '|' IN CHARACTER MODE

Regards,

Mohaiyuddin

[Former Member]

replace all gives

1|10|Johnson|"Stores and Sales"|High|10031984|paycycle1|"red|blue|green"|full

not

1|10|Johnson|"Stores and sales"|High|10031984|paycycle1|"red,blue,green"|full

[Former Member]

Thanks, I missed that part.

Maybe some logic can help.

data : var_overlay(1000) type c.
data : var1(1000) type c,
         l_total_len type i,
         l_count type i,
         l_index type i,
         l_remainder type i

var1 = <your string>.

l_total_len = strlen( var1 ).

clear l_index.
clear l_count.
clear var_overlay.

do l_total_len times.
l_index = sy-index - 1.
if var1+l_index(1) = '"'.
l_count = l_count + 1.
endif.

l_remainder = l_count MOD 2.
if l_remainter = 1. " start of pattern
var_overlay+l_index(1) = var1+l_index(1).
else. " end of pattern
endif.

enddo.

REPLACE ALL OCCURANCES OF ',' in var1 with '|' RESULTS var1.

OVERLAY var_overlay WITH var1.

*var_overlay will contain your desired result.

Regards,

Mohaiyuddin

[Former Member]

data:char(125) .

char = '1,10,Johnson,"Stores and Sales",High,10031984,paycycle1,"red,blue,green",full'.

replace all occurrences of ',' in char with '/' .

write: char.

[GrahamRobbo]

Thanks for your contributions, but my question is regarding "[Regular Expressions|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions]" not string handling.

If anyone can help me with a [regular expression|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp2005/helpdata/en/42/9d6ceabb211d73e10000000a1553f6/content.htm] to achieve the desired result I would appreciate it.

Thanks

Graham Robbo

[GrahamRobbo]

No solution provided. Closing thread.

[Former Member]

Hi Graham,

You may need to employ 3 steps to accomplish your goal:

1. Break up the string into fields using the regex

(([^,]+)|([\s]*"([^"]|"[^,])*")),?

for example

FIND ALL OCCURRENCES OF REGEX regexp IN string RESULTS lt_result.

2. Replace last comma in each field with '|'

REPLACE FIRST OCCURRENCE OF REGEX '(?:,)$' IN field WITH '|'.

3. Concatenate the fields back into one string

Imad