regsub - Perform substitutions based on regular expression pattern matching
regsub ?switches? exp string subSpec ?varName?
regsub(1t) Tcl Built-In Commands regsub(1t)
______________________________________________________________________________
NAME
regsub - Perform substitutions based on regular expression pattern
matching
SYNOPSIS
regsub ?switches? exp string subSpec ?varName?
______________________________________________________________________________
DESCRIPTION
This command matches the regular expression exp against string, and
either copies string to the variable whose name is given by varName or
returns string if varName is not present. (Regular expression matching
is described in the re_syntax reference page.) If there is a match,
then while copying string to varName (or to the result of this command
if varName is not present) the portion of string that matched exp is
replaced with subSpec. If subSpec contains a "&" or "\0", then it is
replaced in the substitution with the portion of string that matched
exp. If subSpec contains a "\n", where n is a digit between 1 and 9,
then it is replaced in the substitution with the portion of string that
matched the n'th parenthesized subexpression of exp. Additional back-
slashes may be used in subSpec to prevent special interpretation of
"&", "\0", "\n" and backslashes. The use of backslashes in subSpec
tends to interact badly with the Tcl parser's use of backslashes, so it
is generally safest to enclose subSpec in braces if it includes back-
slashes.
If the initial arguments to regsub start with - then they are treated
as switches. The following switches are currently supported:
-all All ranges in string that match exp are found and substitution
is performed for each of these ranges. Without this switch only
the first matching range is found and substituted. If -all is
specified, then "&" and "\n" sequences are handled for each sub-
stitution using the information from the corresponding match.
-expanded
Enables use of the expanded regular expression syntax where
whitespace and comments are ignored. This is the same as speci-
fying the (?x) embedded option (see the re_syntax manual page).
-line Enables newline-sensitive matching. By default, newline is a
completely ordinary character with no special meaning. With
this flag, "[^" bracket expressions and "." never match new-
line, "^" matches an empty string after any newline in addition
to its normal function, and "$" matches an empty string before
any newline in addition to its normal function. This flag is
equivalent to specifying both -linestop and -lineanchor, or the
(?n) embedded option (see the re_syntax manual page).
-linestop
Changes the behavior of "[^" bracket expressions and "." so
that they stop at newlines. This is the same as specifying the
(?p) embedded option (see the re_syntax manual page).
-lineanchor
Changes the behavior of "^" and "$" (the "anchors") so they
match the beginning and end of a line respectively. This is the
same as specifying the (?w) embedded option (see the re_syntax
manual page).
-nocase
Upper-case characters in string will be converted to lower-case
before matching against exp; however, substitutions specified
by subSpec use the original unconverted form of string.
-start index
Specifies a character index offset into the string to start
matching the regular expression at. The index value is inter-
preted in the same manner as the index argument to string index.
When using this switch, "^" will not match the beginning of the
line, and \A will still match the start of the string at index.
index will be constrained to the bounds of the input string.
-- Marks the end of switches. The argument following this one will
be treated as exp even if it starts with a -.
If varName is supplied, the command returns a count of the number of
matching ranges that were found and replaced, otherwise the string
after replacement is returned. See the manual entry for regexp for
details on the interpretation of regular expressions.
EXAMPLES
Replace (in the string in variable string) every instance of foo which
is a word by itself with bar:
regsub -all {\mfoo\M} $string bar string
or (using the "basic regular expression" syntax):
regsub -all {(?b)\<foo\>} $string bar string
Insert double-quotes around the first instance of the word interesting,
however it is capitalized.
regsub -nocase {\yinteresting\y} $string {"&"} string
Convert all non-ASCII and Tcl-significant characters into \u escape
sequences by using regsub and subst in combination:
# This RE is just a character class for almost everything "bad"
set RE {[][{};#\\\$ \r\t\u0080-\uffff]}
# We will substitute with a fragment of Tcl script in brackets
set substitution {[format \\\\u%04x [scan "\\&" %c]]}
# Now we apply the substitution to get a subst-string that
# will perform the computational parts of the conversion. Note
# that newline is handled specially through string map since
# backslash-newline is a special sequence.
set quoted [subst [string map {\n {\\u000a}} \
[regsub -all $RE $string $substitution]]]
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/tcl-8 |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
regexp(n), re_syntax(n), subst(n), string(n)
KEYWORDS
match, pattern, quoting, regular expression, substitution
NOTES
Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can
be found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source-
code-downloads.html.
This software was built from source available at
https://github.com/oracle/solaris-userland. The original community
source was downloaded from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl-
core8.6.7-src.tar.gz.
Further information about this software can be found on the open source
community website at https://www.tcl.tk/.
Tcl 8.3 regsub(1t)