CHANGECHARS

The CHANGECHARS function changes one or more occurrences of a specified string in a text expression to another string.

Return Value

When all arguments are TEXT values, the return value is TEXT. When all arguments are NTEXT values, the return value is NTEXT. When the arguments include both TEXT and NTEXT values, the function converts all TEXT values to NTEXT before performing the function operation, and the return value is NTEXT.

Syntax

CHANGECHARS(text-expression oldtext newtext [number] [UPCASE])

Arguments

text-expression: The TEXT or NTEXT expression in which characters are to be changed. When text-expression is a multiline text value, CHANGECHARS preserves the line breaks in the returned value.
oldtext: A TEXT or NTEXT expression that contains one or more characters that will be changed.
newtext: A TEXT or NTEXT expression that contains one or more characters that will replace oldtext.
number: An INTEGER that represents the number of times oldtext should be replaced with newtext when oldtext appears more than once in text-expression. The default is to change all occurrences of oldtext.
UPCASE: Specifies that CHANGECHARS should uppercase text-expression and oldtext before trying to find a match. CHANGECHARS does not uppercase the return value.

Examples

Example 8-45 Changing the Values of Text Characters

This example shows how to change one instance of a portion of a text value.

The statement

SHOW CHANGECHARS('Hello there, Joe\nHello there, Jane', 
   'there', - 'to you', 1)

produces the following output.

Hello to you, Joe
Hello there, Jane