>>>>I am searching for the most expedient way to change a character in a specific area of a string.
>>>>
>>>>mstr='1st-title: ANAME-HER : 3520931 place[21-22]'
>>>>in this string the hyphen between 21 and 22 should be a dot.
>>>>if I applied chrtran() I would end up changing all the hyphens which I do not want to do.
>>>>
>>>>right now all I've been able to accomplish is to locate the error in a portion of the string, but putting it back together is starting to get a bit unwieldy.
>>>>Is there a simpler more direct route of directing the chrtran() to the area beyond '['
>>>>
>>>>thanks
>>>>k
>>>Karen,
>>>
>>>If you have been able to locate the error portion, use something like
>>>

>>> substr(mstr,1 , pos-1) + '.' + substr(mstr, pos+1)
>>>

>>>
>>>Also, if
>>>(1) [ followed by two digits are immediately before the hyphen, and
>>>(2) two digits and ] immediately follow the hyphen
>>>
>>>Then regular expressions may be of help
>>>
>>>

>>>*_______________________________________________________________________________
>>>function do_it()
>>>	
>>>	local regexObj
>>>	regexObj = createobject('VBScript.RegExp')
>>>	regexObj.Global = .t.
>>>	regexObj.IgnoreCase = .f.
>>>	regexObj.Pattern = '(\[\d\d)(-)(\d\d\])'
>>>	
>>>	local s, x
>>>	s ='1st-title: ANAME-HER : 3520931 place[21-22]'
>>>	?s
>>>	x = m.regexObj.Replace(m.s, '$1.$3')
>>>	?x
>>>	
>>>endfunc
>>>*_______________________________________________________________________________
>>>

>>
>>This is a great demonstration that the _regexpr FFC is deserving a boost.
>
>Hey Antonio,
>
>I've never used FFC
>
>Regex has a leaning curve, and I like regex a lot

Yes, it's also a great fun to use.

The boost I was referring to is to simply expose the other methods & properties of the underlying VBScript engine, such as Replace.