CONVERT Function

Replaces individual characters within a string.

Syntax

CONVERT(old-string, oldCharList, newCharList)

Syntax Elements

old-string is the original string.

oldCharList is the list of characters to be changed.

newCharList is a list of replacement characters.

Operation

The CONVERT function replaces every occurrence of each character in oldCharList that appears in old-string with the corresponding character listed in newCharList. This function treats oldCharList and newCharList as a list of characters rather than as a string of characters. For example, the first character in oldCharList is replaced by the first character in newCharList; the second character in oldCharList is replaced by the second character in newCharList, and so on.

• If oldCharList contains more characters than newCharList, the extra characters are deleted.
• If newCharList contains more characters than oldCharList, the extra characters are ignored.
• If a character is repeated in oldCharList, only the first replacement for that character is used; all subsequent replacement characters for the repeated character are ignored.
• If oldCharList is null, old-string is returned with no changes.

See Also

CONVERT statement, CHANGE function.

Examples

OLDSTR = "HOLLYWOOD, CA 93062"
A = "CA96"
B = "FL32"
NEWSTR = CONVERT(OLDSTR,A,B)

Replaces each occurrence of C, A, 9 and 6 in OLDSTR with F, L, 3 and 2, respectively. The resulting string (HOLLYWOOD, FL 33022) is placed in NEWSTR.

X = "ABC123DEF456DKDKEIS"
Y = "C2DK"
Z = "Z9:"
A2 = CONVERT(X,Y,Z)

Changes the value of ABC123DEF456DKDKEIS to ABZ193:EF456::EIS and places this new value in A2. Note that K is missing from A2 because K did not have a replacement character in Z.