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When to use double backslash to escape special character in regular expression

Question & Answer


Question

When do you need to use double backslash to escape special character in regular expression using IBM® Rational® Robot?

Answer

When a string is double quoted, it is processed by the compiler and again at run-time. Since a backslash (\) is removed whenever the string is processed, the double-quoted string needs double backslashes so that there is one left in the string at run time to escape a "special character".

For Example:
We would like to extract ICRow0 using from a response where the pattern is as below:




    /*
    NAME=SEARCH_RESULT1 HREF=\"jav"
    "ascript: submitAction_main1(document.main1,'#ICRow0')\" TABINDEX=28>10<"
    "/A></TD>\n"
    */
The regular expression to be used in the match statement would be:

    "NAME=SEARCH_RESULT1 HREF=\"javascript: submitAction_main1\\(document.main1,'#([A-Za-z0-9]*)$0'\\)\" TABINDEX=28", sTemp3,&sRow);

where the right parenthesis and left parenthesis are the special characters that need to be escaped.

Disclaimer

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[{"Product":{"code":"SSSHDX","label":"Rational Robot"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU053","label":"Cloud & Data Platform"},"Component":"Playback","Platform":[{"code":"PF033","label":"Windows"}],"Version":"2003.06.00;2003.06.10;2003.06.12;2003.06.13;2003.06.14;2003.06.15;2003.06.16;7.0;7.0.0.1;7.0.0.2;7.0.0.3;7.0.1;7.0.1.1;7.0.1.2;7.0.0.4;7.0.1.3;7.0.2","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB45","label":"Automation"}}]

Historical Number

133182735

Document Information

Modified date:
16 June 2018

UID

swg21152248

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