Question

<cffunction name="foo">
     <cfargument name="default">
     <cfoutput>#ARGUMENTS.default#</cfoutput>
     <cfreturn ARGUMENTS.default />
</cffunction>

<cfset LOCAL.derp = "((bar))" />
<cfset LOCAL.derp = LOCAL.derp.replaceAll("\(\((.*)\)\)", foo('$1')) />
<cfoutput>#LOCAL.derp#</cfoutput>

The output I am expecting is bar bar however I am getting $1 bar. How can this be done in ColdFusion9?

Answer 1

The foo function is evaluated first and the string result of that function is what is subsequently passed to replaceAll, which has no idea its input was provided via a function.

String.replaceAll is a Java method which accepts a regex pattern string and a replacement string – you can’t pass a callback function in directly.

A solution to this is to use the cfRegex library I have created – this has a Replace function which lets you pass in a function to be executed against every match.

This could be used something like this:

<cfset Local.Derp = RegexReplace
    ( Pattern     = '\(\((.*)\)\)'
    , Text        = Local.Derp
    , Replacement = replaceWithG1AndOutput
    ) />

<cffunction name="replaceWithG1AndOutput" returntype="String" output=true>
    <!---
        Use Arguments.Match for "((bar))"
        or Arguments.Groups[1].Match for "bar"
    --->
    <cfoutput>#Arguments.Groups[1].Match#</cfoutput>
    <cfreturn Arguments.Groups[1].Match />
</cffunction>