[PIG-2905] Improve documentation around REPLACE

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Component/s: documentation
• Assignee: Cheolsoo Park
• Reporter: William W. Graham Jr
• Created: 04/Sep/12 18:01
• Updated: 05/Sep/12 04:56
• Resolved: 05/Sep/12 04:56

Description

Document how REPLACE uses a Java regex and link out to JDK docs describing reserved characters and escaping. From recent confusion on the users list:

> String source = "[02/Aug/2012:05:01:17";
> > String target ="[";
> > String replaceWith = "";
> > return source.replaceAll(source, target, replaceWith);


> Note that Java String.replaceAll() takes a regular expression for the 2nd
> parameter (i.e. target), and "[" is a special character. To use it as is,
> you have to escape it, so in your Pig script, you should do:

> REPLACE(date,'\\[','')