CHANGE Call

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Language Reference

CHANGE Call

search and replace text in an array

CALL CHANGE( matrix, old, new<, numchange>);

The inputs to the CHANGE call are as follows:

matrix: is a character matrix or quoted literal.
old: is the string to be changed.
new: is the string to replace the old string.
numchange: is the number of times to make the change.

The CHANGE subroutine changes the first numchange occurrences of the substring old in each element of the character array matrix to the form new. If numchange is not specified, the routine defaults to 1. If numchange is 0, the routine changes all occurrences of old. If no occurrences are found, the matrix is not changed. For example, the statements

   a="It was a dark and stormy night.";
   call change(a, "night","day");

produce

              A="It was a dark and stormy day."

In the old operand, the following characters are reserved:

% $ [ ] { } < > - ? * # @ ' `(backquote) ^

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