Replacing '.' and '-' in column values with empty space '' in QGIS

Question

I have a shapefile that has a column named "SBL" with string values that contain points (.) and hyphens (-). However, I want to remove these points and hyphens, but so far I haven't been able to.

have tried both replace and regexp_replace functions in QGIS, but I haven't been successful yet. Below is a sample of these values:

Also below is the code I tried:

 regexp_replace("SBL", '.', '')

Answer 1

Try enclosing the . and - in square brackets for the regex:

regexp_replace("SBL", '[.-]', '')

Otherwise, you can chain replace like this:

replace(replace("SBL", '.', ''), '-', '')

If you actually want to replace them by a space, as implied by your remark "empty space", the replacement string should be ' ' (with a space between).

123.14-2-16.1 would become 123 14 2 16 1.

Using '' (no space) will simply remove the characters from the input string.

123.14-2-16.1 would become 123142161.

Answer 2

Your expression does not work as the period is a special character and therefore must be double-escaped:

regexp_replace("SBL", '\\.', '')

regexp_replace("SBL", '\\-', '')

OR

regexp_replace("SBL", '\\.|\\-', '')

but the best solution is to Matt