How do I replace one or more whitespace characters using the replace() function in XQuery?
regex, xquery
Solution
You've got the slash the wrong way round:
replace($input, '\s*', '-')
Also, depending on the implementation in XQuery, this might insert a dash between every two non-space characters (as `\s*` allows 0 characters, and therefore any empty match).
[EDIT: As Oliver Hallam points out in a comment, the XQuery specification actually requires that an error is raised if the pattern can lead to zero-length matches.]
Therefore, you might want/have to use `+` (which means 1 or more characters) instead:
replace($input, '\s+', '-')
Btw, your other attempt (with the fixed slash) would match a single whitespace character plus anything that comes after it.
Problem
I need to replace multiple whitespace characters with a single dash in XQuery using the replace() function. ``` $input: 'abc def 123' Desired Output: 'abc-def-123' ``` I tried: ``` replace($input, '/s*', '-') ``` and ``` replace($input, '/s.*', '-') ``` but these do not work. I am aware of normalize-space() but I want a more general function. Thanks! - Dan