FILESTRREP

Purpose:

Replaces a pattern string with a new pattern in one or more files.

Syntax:

FILESTRREP("filespec", "patstr", "repstr", recurse, caseflag, maxmatches, wildcards)

"filespec"

A string. A list of files to process, can include wildcard characters such as * and ?.

"srcstr"

A string. The source string.

"patstr"

A string. The pattern to search for.

"repstr"

A string. The replacement pattern.

recurse

Optional. An integer, recursively process files in sub-directories.

0:	do not recurse (default)
1:	recurset

caseflag

Optional. An integer, the case sensitivity flag.

0:	case not significant (default)
1:	case significant

maxmatches

Optional. An integer, the maximum number of matches to process. Defaults to -1, process all matches.

wildcards

Optional. An integer, process * (any sequence) and ? (single character) as wildcard characters or use regular expressions (regex) in "patstr".

0:	no wildcards and no regular expressions (default)
1:	support * and ? wildcards
2:	support regular expressions (regex)

Returns:

An integer, the number of files in which the replacement occurred.

Example:

filestrrep("\temp\*.txt", "January", "April")

Returns the count of the number of files in the "\temp" folder with extension ".txt" where the text "January" was replaced with the text "April".

Remarks:

The pattern and replacement strings are case sensitive.

If the pattern is not found in a file, the file remains unchanged.

When wildcard is set to 1, use * in "patstr" to match any character sequence and ? to match a single character. To search for a literal * or ? character instead of treating them as wildcards, escape them by prefixing a backslash: \* or \?.

When wildcard is set to 2, the search pattern "patstr" is interpreted a regular expression. Regular expressions (regex) provide far more flexibility than simple wildcards. A regular expression can indicate character classes (match a character from a set), quantifiers (how many times a pattern repeats), anchors (position in the string) and logical operators. For example, the pattern:

[0-9]{4}

matches exactly 4 digits.

Consider the file MyFile.txt that contains the following two lines:

a12,123,1234,1a2,987

a12,123,1234,1a2,1987

The command:

filestrrep("D:\temp\MyFile.txt", "[0-9]{4}", "FOUR", 0, 1, -1, 2)

converts the text to:

a12,123,FOUR,1a2,987

a12,123,FOUR,1a2,FOUR

Below is a summary of regular expression patterns when wildcards is 2:

Regex Quick Summary

Category	Character	Description / Matches
Character Matches	`.`	Any single character except a newline (\n).
Character Matches	`\d`	Any digit character (equivalent to `[0-9]`).
Character Matches	`\w`	Any alphanumeric "word" character (letters, numbers, underscore).
Character Matches	`\s`	Any whitespace character (spaces, tabs, line breaks).
Character Classes	`[abc]`	Any single character inside the brackets (a, b, or c).
Character Classes	`[^abc]`	Any single character NOT inside the brackets.
Quantifiers	`*`	0 or more repetitions of the preceding token.
Quantifiers	`+`	1 or more repetitions of the preceding token.
Quantifiers	`?`	0 or 1 repetition (makes the preceding token optional).
Quantifiers	`{n,m}`	Between `n` and `m` repetitions of the token.
Anchors	`^`	The start of the string or line.
Anchors	`$`	The end of the string or line.
Anchors	`\b`	A word boundary (the edge position between a \w and a non-\w character).
Logic / Groups	`\|`	Alternation operator (acts like a logical OR statement).
Logic / Groups	`(...)`	Capturing group. Isolates tokens and remembers the match context.

Common Regex Patterns

Digits only: ^[0-9]+$

Uppercase letters: ^[A-Z]+$

Alphanumeric: ^[A-Za-z0-9]+$

Floating‑point number: ^[+-]?\d+(\.\d+)?$

Email (simple): ^[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,}$

Backreferences and Substitution Tokens

When wildcard is 2, the replacement string "repstr", supports backreferences and substitution tokens.

Token	Meaning	Example call	Result
$0	Whole match	strrep("hello","(\w+)","[$0]",1,-1,2)	"[hello]"
$1 .. $9	Numbered capture group	strrep("John Smith","(\w+) (\w+)","$2 $1",1,-1,2)	"Smith John"
$10, $11 …	Multi-digit group number	strrep("abcdefghijk","(a)(b)(c)(d)(e)(f)(g)(h)(i)(j)(k)","$11",1,-1,2)	"k"
${name}	Named capture group	strrep("hello world","(?<a>\w+) (?<b>\w+)","${b} ${a}",1,-1,2)	"world hello"
\$	Literal dollar sign	strrep("100","[0-9]+","\$$0",1,-1,2)	"$100"
\\	Literal backslash	strrep("hello","\w+","\\",1,-1,2)	"\"

See STRREPLACE to replace a pattern in a string.