Re: Replacing characters inside of a string

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Jack!

This can be too much fun! You can do it with something like this, maybe -

update table set column = substr(column, 1, 1) || substr('**********', 
1, len(trim(column)) - 2) || substr(column, len(trim(column)) - 1), 1)

Have as many asterisks to cover longest value.

Maybe? Erector set building time!

Cheers
Vern

On 3/7/2022 11:21 AM, Jack Prucha wrote:
> I have a requirement to change some character fields in a file.  Leave the first and last character as is and replace all the between characters with a fill character such as an asterisk.
>
> For example:
>
> 'Jack' = 'J**K'
> 'iSeries = 'i*****s'
>
> I'm testing SQL statements with hard-coded strings.  I thought I had a solution with TRANSLATE because it has a fill character parameter but it wants to translate the 1st and last characters if they happen to match one of the between characters.  I don't know where to begin with perhaps REGEXP_REPLACE.    I'm back at square one now and don't see any straightforward SQL methods to do this.  I know this can be done with RPG but hoping to do this without 'code'.
>
> TIA
> Jack
>
>
>
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