In this section we will cover the most common data manipulation operations that are relevant to
string data. Our focus will be on manipulating columns of a table that are of a string data
type.
This section is organized as follows:
Properties: Covers how to obtain
properties of a string object such as its length, encoding, and data type.
Formatting: Covers how to set the
formatting of a string including how to set its case to upper or lower.
Combining: Covers data manipulation
operations involving combining strings such as concatenating, collapsing, interpolating, and
repeating.
Matching: Covers string matching operations
such as detecting an occurrence of a substring or a regex pattern, locating a substring or a
regex pattern, and counting the occurrences of a substring or a regex pattern.
Modifying: Covers the string data
manipulation operations of finding and replacing substrings or regex patterns. It also covers the
related operations of removing and trimming.
Extracting: Covers extracting a substring
via its location or via a regex pattern.
Splitting: Covers splitting a string
around particular delimiters as well as selecting from and processing the resulting parts.
In this section, we will show each string data manipulation operation in its most common application
scenario. For example, we will show string matching in a data filtering context and pattern
extraction in a data transformation application scenario. We suggest you use this chapter in
conjunction with the data manipulation patterns chapters (most
importantly, Selecting, Filtering, Sorting, Transforming,
and Aggregating) to compose the expressions that meet
your data manipulation need.