Replace () with - using regexprep

Hi,

I have a cell array of strings look like this,

      '6,844,828'      '(355,537)'  
      '4,208,098'      '(150,830)'  
      '3,942,604'      '(185,044)'  
      '3,349,374'      '(189,507)'

And I need to replace the () with negative signs so that I could convert them to numbers. e.g. (3) actually means -3.

So obviously I could do things like:

DataArr = strrep(DataArr,'(','-'); % replace ( with -
DataArr = strrep(DataArr,')',''); % remove )

And it works, but I really would like to know how to do that using regexprep, some thing like:

regexprep(CSmap, '\(/d{*}\)/','d{*}')

I don't know where to use \ ...

Thanks in advance!!!

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

Well, just as simple as your code unless you have other requirements:

DataArr = regexprep(DataArr,'(','-'); % replace ( with -
DataArr = regexprep(DataArr,')',''); % remove )

[Zoe Zhang]

Thx for your quick response. And could you explain to me why and when do people use \?

[Fangjun Jiang]

See doc regexp and follow the link for Regular Expressions. It's a quite complex topic. Mastering regular expressions takes time and practice. It makes my head spin many times. For example, if you have a string s='a1s34da3g7' and you want to pick out only digits, you can use:

>> s='a1s34da3g7';

d=regexp(s,'\d+','match')

d =

'1' '34' '3' '7'

'\d' means any numeric digit,i.e. 0-9

'+' means 1 or more repeatition

[Zoe Zhang]

Thanks again! :) I will just keep learning, learning~~