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ABAP_REGEX - XPath Syntax Regular expressions with XPath syntax can be specified behind the argument xpath of built-in functions for strings. Objects for XPath regular expressions can be created with the factory method CREATE_XPATH2 of the system class CL_ABAP_REGEX to be used in statements FIND and REPLACE or with the system class CL_ABAP_MATCHER. Currently, there is no detailed description of the XPath syntax for regular expressions in the ABAP keyword documentation.
For a short syntax overview, see Special Characters in XPath Regular Expressions
For the complete documentation, refer to XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators. A regular expression in XPath syntax can be compiled in a normal and extended mode. In the extended mode, most unescaped whitespace (blanks and line breaks) of the pattern are ignored outside character classes and comments can be placed behind #. In ABAP built-in functions, the extended mode is switched on by default and can be switched off with (?-x) in the regular expression. When using CL_ABAP_REGEX, it can be switched by the parameter EXTENDED of method CREATE_XPATH2.
Latest notes:
A regular expression with XPath syntax cannot be specified directly as a character string in the statements FIND and REPLACE, but you can use objects of CL_ABAP_REGEX that are created with method CREATE_XPATH2 with the addition REGEX instead. NON_V5_HINTS
The test and demonstration program DEMO_REGEX allows XPath syntax to be tested by selecting XPath. ABAP_HINT_END
ABAP_EXAMPLE_VX5 A special feature of XPath regular expressions is the subtraction of character sets. In the following example, the letters a to c are subtracted from character set BasicLatin and the first match is d at offset 3. ABEXA 01475 ABAP_EXAMPLE_END
ABAP_EXAMPLE_VX5 Compared to PCRE, XPath regular expressions allow the escape character not only in front of special characters. The match function with parameter xpath finds x while the match function with parameter pcre does not. Accordingly the first FIND statement returns in sy-subrc the value 0 while the second FIND statement returns 4. ABEXA 01474 ABAP_EXAMPLE_END
