STRTRAN( ) Function

Searches a character expression or memo field for occurrences of a second character expression or memo field, and then replaces each occurrence with a third character expression or memo field.

STRTRAN(cSearched, cExpressionSought [, cReplacement]
   [, nStartOccurrence] [, nNumberOfOccurrences] [, nFlags])

Return Values

Character

Parameters

• cSearched
  Specifies the character expression that is searched. cSearched can be a memo field.

• cExpressionSought
  Specifies the character expression that is searched for in cSearched. The search is case-sensitive. cExpressionSought can be a memo field.

• cReplacement
  Specifies the character expression that replaces every occurrence of cSearchFor in cSearched. If you omit cReplacement, every occurrence of cExpressionSought is replaced with the empty string.

• nStartOccurrence
  Specifies which occurrence of cExpressionSought is the first to be replaced. For example, if nStartOccurrence is 4, replacement begins with the fourth occurrence of cExpressionSought in cSearched and the first three occurrences of cExpressionSought remain unchanged. The occurrence where replacement begins defaults to the first occurrence of cExpressionSought if you omit nStartOccurrence.

• nNumberOfOccurrences
  Specifies the number of occurrences of cExpressionSought to replace. If you omit nNumberOfOccurrences, all occurrences of cExpressionSought, starting with the occurrence specified with nStartOccurrence, are replaced.

• nFlags
  Specifies the case-sensitivity of a search according to the following values:

  nFlags Value	Description
  0 (default)	Search is case-sensitive, replace is with exact cReplacement text. This is the behavior in versions of Visual FoxPro prior to 7.
  1	Search is case-insensitive, replace is with exact cReplacement text.
  2	Search is case-sensitive, replace is with exact cReplacement text.
  3	Search is case-insensitive; replace is with the case of cReplacement changed to match the case of the string found. The case of cReplacement will only be changed if the string found is all uppercase, lowercase, or title (proper) case.

  You can also specify default behavior by passing –1 as the nFlags value.

Remarks

You can specify where the replacement begins and how many replacements are made. STRTRAN( ) returns the resulting character string. Specify –1 for optional parameters you want to skip over if you just need to specify the nFlags setting.

Example

STORE 'abracadabra' TO gcString
? STRTRAN(gcString, 'a', 'z')  && Displays zbrzczdzbrz
? STRTRAN(gcString, 'a', 'q', 2, 3)  && Displays abrqcqdqbra

See Also

CHRTRAN( ) | CHRTRANC( ) | STUFF( ) | Creating Character Expressions | STUFFC( ) Function