Text replacement is a flexible way to automate text pre-processing before it can be parsed as expected. When you want to search and replace any string in the raw text, you can define a text replacement.

Note: Text replacement is unavailable to Text Parser and cannot be applied to retrieved sample text.

Text replacement can be defined in two levels:

▪Global level: search and replace a string in the whole range of sample text.

▪Parser level: search and replace a string in the given range of text that has been matched by a specific parser’s definition.

Text Replacement Rules

When defining a text replacement, you can add multiple replacements rules. Each rule contains two objects as follows.

▪Find What - the text you are searching for in the given range.

oMatch Whole Word - once enabled, searches will only match if the result is a whole word, e.g., a search for “FastEthernet” will not return “FastEthernet1/2”.

oMatch Case - once enabled, search terms are case-sensitive, e.g., a search for “ethernet” will not return “Ethernet”.

oRegular Expression - once enabled, search terms will use the regular expression engine to find complex patterns in the text; otherwise, search terms will be interpreted literally.

▪Replace With - the text that will replace what is matched.

oReplace All Matches - replace all matches in the text scope.

oReplace First Only - replace the first match only.

Use Cases of Text Replacement

▪Form a Table Header Line
When a device command output looks very similar to a standard table format but only misses a table header line, you can define text replacement to replace the line of text ahead of the table data with a customized table header line. This twist allows you to continue to define a table parser to parse the table data.

▪Fill Up Table Headers
When one or more table headers are missing in the sample text, using a table parser directly will lose the data of those columns.

▪Rename Duplicate Table Header
When there are two table headers with a duplicate name, the latter one cannot be parsed. The workaround is to rename table headers so that each header can have a unique name. This can be done by replacing the line of table headers with a new one.

▪Adjust table column width
Sometimes the table headers are not aligned with data cells and cannot be parsed by a table parser. For example, the alignment gap between table headers and cells causes an incorrect parsed result.

▪Translate Interface Name
Sometimes interface names in the raw text are irregular and cannot be further used before manual processing.