MATLAB: Replace with regexprep in text file

regexprepreplace

Hello everybody! I am using regexprep to replace a set of characters in a text file.
For example: I am trying to replace +, – , /, ) , (| occurences in my text file with |€. so i used the following code
fid = fopen('repSymbols.txt','wt');
inData = fileread('equations');
fprintf(fid,'%s',regexprep(inData,'[=+)-/(]','€'));
fclose(fid);
But when I use this, it also replaces the occurences of dot . in the file. I don't want the dots to be replaced. Any idea on this?

Best Answer

The ")-/" term in the pattern search is actually interpretted as all characters from ")" to "/". So it's the following:
char(uint8(')'):uint8('/'))
ans =
   ')*+,-./'
Therefore the expanded search pattern does include the ".".
To fix this, use the escape character "\" before the character "-" like this:
inData = '=+)-/(...';
regexprep(inData,'[=+)-/(]','€')  %Incorrect
ans =
  '€€€€€€€€€'
regexprep(inData,'[=+)\-/(]','€') %Correct
                      ^ add this \
ans =
  '€€€€€€...'
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