Regex to replace every character with a space

[Bobbins]

Hello All,

Odd request this and my regex is failing me. I need to take a column and basically have the text string have as many " " as it does letters. (Appreciating this will be an empty field full of dynamic spaces depending on cell string length).

I did try REGEX_Replace([My data],"\.", " ") but I still get the text, What's the correct regex? 

Thank you

Data:

My Data	Length of String
To Check	8
My Birthday	11
Happy Birthday	14

[IraWatt · Accepted solution]

Hey @Bobbins,

😄 that is an odd use case! You dont need the backslash as that escapes the special character. What you want is this:

REGEX_Replace([My Data], ".", " ")

If you want to learn more about Regex the community has some really quick interactive videos on getting to grips with it here https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Interactive-Lessons/tkb-p/interactive-lessons/label-name/Parsing%20...

Any questions or issues please ask

Ira Watt
Technical Consultant
Watt@Bulien.com 

[DataNath · Accepted solution]

@Bobbins you just need to remove the \ where you have \. as your target. Escaping it with the backslash means Alteryx is looking for fullstops, whereas a . on it's own indicates any character:

[Bobbins]

@IraWatt  @DataNath Ah doh. Thank you both! I was using Regex101 and it has a / to start.

So unusual eh? I need this because I have a graph which I need the Y axis which is full of names to look like this:

Bob - Birthday

Jane

Tom

Tammy - Happy New Year

Logan

Paul

Jane, Tom, Logan and Paul all have the same as Bob or Tammy (relative) but it looks messy if they all say it, so I can just manipulate the text field to have a large gap for them and all looks better.

Odd i know! 

[MarqueeCrew · Accepted solution]

@Bobbins ,

 isn't this easy to read?

Padleft("", length([field]," ")

 no RegEx to harm the workflow

cheers,

mark

 

[Bobbins]

@MarqueeCrew  I didn't even know about this function, thats so much quicker (and easier!). Thank you!!

[MarqueeCrew]

@Bobbins ,

 it's a very useful function along with its sister, padright(). 

cheers,

 mark