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Match – PB Docs 126 – PowerBuilder Library

Match – PB Docs 126

Match PowerScript function

Description

Determines whether a string’s value contains a particular
pattern of characters.

Syntax

Argument

Description

string

The string in which you want to look
for a pattern of characters

textpattern

A string whose value is the text pattern

Return Values

Boolean. Returns true if string matches textpattern and false if
it does not. Match also returns false if
either argument has not been assigned a value or the pattern is
invalid. If any argument’s value is null, Match returns null.

Usage

Match enables you to evaluate whether a
string contains a general pattern of characters. To find out whether
a string contains a specific substring, use the Pos function.

Textpattern is similar to a regular expression.
It consists of metacharacters, which have special meaning, and ordinary
characters, which match themselves. You can specify that the string
begin or end with one or more characters from a set, or that it
contain any characters except those in a set.

A text pattern consists of metacharacters, which have special
meaning in the match string, and nonmetacharacters, which match
the characters themselves.The following tables explain the meaning
and use of these metacharacters.

Table 10-6: Metacharacters used by Match function

Metacharacter

Meaning

Example

Caret (^)

Matches the beginning of a string

^C matches C at the beginning of a string.

Dollar sign ($)

Matches the end of a string

s$ matches s at the end of a string.

Period (.)

Matches any character

. . . matches three consecutive characters.

Backslash ()

Removes the following metacharacter’s
special characteristics so that it matches itself

$ matches $.

Character class (a group of characters enclosed
in square brackets ([ ]))

Matches any of the enclosed characters

[AEIOU] matches A,
E, I, O, or U.

You can use hyphens to abbreviate ranges of characters in
a character class. For example, [A-Za-z] matches
any letter.

Complemented character class (first character
inside the brackets is a caret)

Matches any character not in the group following
the caret

[^0-9] matches any
character except a digit, and [^A-Za-z] matches
any character except a letter.

The metacharacters asterisk (*), plus (+),
and question mark (?) are unary operators that are used to specify
repetitions in a regular expression:

Table 10-7: Unary operators used as metacharacters by Match function

Metacharacter

Meaning

Example

* (asterisk)

Indicates zero or more occurrences

A* matches zero or more As (no As,
A, AA, AAA, and so on)

+ (plus)

Indicates one or more occurrences

A+ matches one A or more than one
A (A, AAA, and so on)

? (question mark)

Indicates zero or one occurrence

A? matches an empty string (“”) or A

Sample patterns

The following table shows various text patterns and sample text
that matches each pattern:

Table 10-8: Text pattern examples for Match function

This pattern

Matches

AB

Any string that contains AB; for example,
ABA, DEABC, graphAB_one

B*

Any string that contains 0 or more Bs;
for example, AC, B, BB, BBB, ABBBC, and so on

AB*C

Any string containing the pattern AC
or ABC or ABBC, and so on (0 or more Bs)

AB+C

Any string containing the pattern ABC
or ABBC or ABBBC, and so on (1 or more Bs)

ABB*C

Any string containing the pattern ABC
or ABBC or ABBBC, and so on (1 B plus 0 or more Bs)

^AB

Any string starting with AB

AB?C

Any string containing the pattern AC
or ABC (0 or 1 B)

^[ABC]

Any string starting with A, B, or C

[^ABC]

A string containing any characters other
than A, B, or C

^[^abc]

A string that begins with any character
except a, b, or c

^[^a-z]$

Any single-character string that is not
a lowercase letter (^ and $ indicate the beginning and
end of the string)

[A-Z]+

Any string with one or more uppercase
letters

^[0-9]+$

Any string consisting only of digits

^[0-9][0-9][0-9]$

Any string consisting of exactly three
digits

^([0-9][0-9][0-9])$

Any consisting of exactly three digits
enclosed in parentheses

Examples

This statement returns true if
the text in sle_ID begins with one
or more uppercase or lowercase letters (^ at the beginning of the
pattern means that the beginning of the string must match the characters
that follow):

This statement returns false if
the text in sle_ID contains any digits
(^ inside a bracket is a complement operator):

This statement returns true if
the text in sle_ID contains one uppercase
letter:

This statement returns true if
the text in sle_ID contains one or
more uppercase letters (+ indicates one or more occurrences
of the pattern):

This statement returns false if
the text in sle_ID contains anything
other than two digits followed by a letter (^ and $ indicate
the beginning and end of the string):

See Also

  • Pos

  • Match method for DataWindows
    in the DataWindow Reference or the online Help


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