MATLAB: Replacing a string with another and vice versa

Question

Hi, I would like to write two functions:

1- replace all occurrences of 'a(number)' and 'bb(number)' with respectively 'a_number' and 'bb_number'. More concretely, a(1) would become a_1 and bb(1285) would become bb_1285. the typical string would look like

string='log(a(2))+a(3)*cosh(exp(bb(5))'

and the result would be

string='log(a_2)+a_3*cos(exp(bb_5))'

2- do the inverse operation

Is there any efficient way of doing this? My sense is that it can be done with regular expressions but I am just a beginner on that front and I would not know how to go about this. Your help will be appreciated.

thanks,

Pat.

Answer 1

str = 'log(a(2))+a(3)*cosh(exp(bb(5)))'; % Initial string
str = regexprep(str,'(bb)\((\d)\)|(a)\((\d)\)','$1_$2')