VBScript Regular Expression Functions
Here is the VBScript Replace Function Documentation at Microsoft.com, for simple search and replace.
For advanced search and replace, Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition version 5+ contains limited regular expression support. You can use these little utility functions to perform common regular expression tasks, such as finding the first match in a string, or replacing all matches with another string. VBScript 5 is included with Windows Script Host, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5+, Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0+, and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.
VBScript Find First Match By Regular Expression Utility Function
' Get the first regex submatch from the string
' Returns empty string if not found, otherwise returns the matched string
Function GetFirstMatch(PatternToMatch, StringToSearch)
Dim regEx, CurrentMatch, CurrentMatches
Set regEx = New RegExp
regEx.Pattern = PatternToMatch
regEx.IgnoreCase = True
regEx.Global = True
regEx.MultiLine = True
Set CurrentMatches = regEx.Execute(StringToSearch)
GetFirstMatch = ""
If CurrentMatches.Count >= 1 Then
Set CurrentMatch = CurrentMatches(0)
If CurrentMatch.SubMatches.Count >= 1 Then
GetFirstMatch = CurrentMatch.SubMatches(0)
End If
End If
Set regEx = Nothing
End Function
' Example
' Parse out the database name from a SQL server database connection string
Function GetDatabaseName(ByVal DSNString)
GetDatabaseName = GetFirstMatch(".*Initial Catalog=(.*);", DSNString)
End Function
VBScript Replace All Matches By Regular Expression Utility Function
' Replace all matches in the string with the replacement text
Sub ReplaceAllByExpression(ByRef StringToExtract, ByVal MatchPattern, _
ByVal ReplacementText)
Dim regEx, CurrentMatch, CurrentMatches
Set regEx = New RegExp
regEx.Pattern = MatchPattern
regEx.IgnoreCase = True
regEx.Global = True
regEx.MultiLine = True
StringToExtract = regEx.Replace(StringToExtract, ReplacementText)
Set regEx = Nothing
End Sub
' Example
' Remove all images from an HTML page
ReplaceAllByExpression HTMLPageData, "<img[^<]*?>", ""
Created 2005-02-07, Last Modified 2011-07-24, © Shailesh N. Humbad
Disclaimer: This content is provided as-is. The information may be incorrect.
Disclaimer: This content is provided as-is. The information may be incorrect.