Translate #3 - inspired by Rob Mintner

Folks, A third way to look at this problem - which appears to run a hair faster. My original method was to do it inline and compact/extend the string as necesssary to accomodate the 'to' string (kludgy) Robs method was to pop @ character into a second string until you hit the right word and then move in the replacement, bump the indices and keep going. The first time I read it I misinterpreted it and thought he was doing what I present now. This method splits the string and pops it into a second string then moves it back. I'm still interested in other ways to look at this, but have to go on and do that real work thing (although I needed this function for real work so I really am working - HONEST!). j. -------- cut here ---------------------------------------------------------- DATABASE xxxx MAIN DEFINE junk CHAR(512) # test data - original LET junk = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE foo_field MATCHES 'XYZ*' OR foo_field IS NULL" DISPLAY junk CLIPPED # test data - to is shorter CALL translate("foo_field", "fieldA", junk) RETURNING junk DISPLAY junk CLIPPED # test data - to is longer CALL translate("fieldA", "foo_field", junk) RETURNING junk DISPLAY junk CLIPPED # test data - to is same length CALL translate("foo_field", "abcdefghi", junk) RETURNING junk DISPLAY junk CLIPPED END MAIN ############################################################################# # translate all occurences of 'from' in 'strg' to 'to' ############################################################################# FUNCTION translate(from, to, strg) DEFINE from, to CHAR(20), o_strg, strg CHAR(512), idx, f_len, t_len, s_len SMALLINT, bound, end_pos SMALLINT # get the lengths of all parties LET f_len = LENGTH(from) LET t_len = LENGTH(to) LET s_len = LENGTH(strg) LET bound = s_len - f_len + 1 # find the string LET idx = 0 # can't use a FOR, length may change WHILE idx <= bound LET idx = idx + 1 LET end_pos = idx + f_len - 1 # end of subscript IF from = strg[idx,end_pos] THEN LET idx = idx - 1 LET end_pos = end_pos + 1 LET o_strg = strg[1,idx], to clipped, strg[end_pos,s_len] LET strg = o_strg CLIPPED LET s_len = LENGTH(strg) LET idx = idx + t_len + 1 LET bound = s_len - f_len + 1 # reset boundary condition END IF END WHILE RETURN strg END FUNCTION -------------- and here --------------------------------------------------- j. _____________________________________________________________________________ Jack Parker | Hewlett Packard, BSMC Boise, Idaho, USA| Your .sig has expired, please enter jparker@hpbs2561.boi.hp.com | a new one. (208) 396-5388 (W) (208) 384-1623 (H) | _____________________________________________________________________________ Any opinions expressed herein are my own and not those of my employers. _____________________________________________________________________________