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4.4. Standard Module regsub

This module defines a number of functions useful for working with regular expressions (see built-in module regex).

sub (pat, repl, str) -- function of module regsub
Replace the first occurrence of pattern pat in string str by replacement repl. If the pattern isn't found, the string is returned unchanged. The pattern may be a string or an already compiled pattern. The replacement may contain references `\digit' to subpatterns and escaped backslashes.
gsub (pat, repl, str) -- function of module regsub
Replace all (non-overlapping) occurrences of pattern pat in string str by replacement repl. The same rules as for sub() apply. Empty matches for the pattern are replaced only when not adjacent to a previous match, so e.g. gsub('', '-', 'abc') returns '-a-b-c-'.
split (str, pat) -- function of module regsub
Split the string str in fields separated by delimiters matching the pattern pat, and return a list containing the fields. Only non-empty matches for the pattern are considered, so e.g. split('a:b', ':*') returns ['a', 'b'] and split('abc', '') returns ['abc'].