Regular Expressions Substitutions with Regular Expressions Advanced Replacement

Example

Some programming languages have its own Regex peculiarities, for example, the $+ term (in C#, Perl, VB etc.) which replaces the matched text to the last group captured.

Example:

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public class Example
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      string pattern = @"\b(\w+)\s\1\b";
      string substitution = "$+";
      string input = "The the dog jumped over the fence fence.";
      Console.WriteLine(Regex.Replace(input, pattern, substitution, 
                        RegexOptions.IgnoreCase));
   }
}
// The example displays the following output:
//      The dog jumped over the fence.

_{Example from Microsoft Official's Developer Network ^[1]}

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Other rare substitution terms are $` and $':

$` = Replaces matches to the text before the matching string
$' = Replaces matches to the text after the matching string

Due to this fact, these replacements strings should do their work like this:

Regex: /part2/
Input: "part1part2part3"
Replacement: "$`"
Output: "part1part1part3" //Note that part2 was replaced with part1, due &` term
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regex: /part2/
Input: "part1part2part3"
Replacement: "$'"
Output: "part1part3part3" //Note that part2 was replaced with part3, due &' term

Here is an example of these substitutions working on a piece of javascript:

var rgx = /middle/;
var text = "Your story must have a beginning, middle, and end"
console.log(text.replace(rgx, "$`")); 
//Logs: "Your story must have a beginning, Your story must have a beginning, , and end"
console.log(text.replace(rgx, "$'"))
//Logs: "Your story must have a beginning, , and end, and end"

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There is also the term $_ which retrieves the whole matched text instead:

Regex: /part2/
Input: "part1part2part3"
Replacement: "$_"
Output: "part1part1part2part3part3" //Note that part2 was replaced with part1part2part3,
                                                                         // due $_ term

Converting this to VB would give us this:

Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions

Module Example
   Public Sub Main()
      Dim input As String = "ABC123DEF456"
      Dim pattern As String = "\d+"
      Dim substitution As String = "$_"
      Console.WriteLine("Original string:          {0}", input)
      Console.WriteLine("String with substitution: {0}", _
                        Regex.Replace(input, pattern, substitution))      
   End Sub
End Module
' The example displays the following output:
'       Original string:          ABC123DEF456
'       String with substitution: ABCABC123DEF456DEFABC123DEF456

_{Example from Microsoft Official's Developer Network ^[2]}

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And the last but not least substitution term is $$, which translated to a regex expression would be the same as \$ (An escaped version of the literal $).

If you want to match a string like this: USD: $3.99 for example, and want to store the 3.99, but replace it as $3.99 with only one regex, you may use:

Regex: /USD:\s+\$([\d.]+)/
Input: "USD: $3.99"
Replacement: "$$$1"
To Store: "$1"
Output: "$3.99"
Stored: "3.99"

If you want to test this with Javascript, you may use the code:

var rgx = /USD:\s+\$([\d.]+)/;
var text = "USD: $3.99";
var stored = parseFloat(rgx.exec(text)[1]);
console.log(stored); //Logs 3.99
console.log(text.replace(rgx, "$$$1")); //Logs $3.99

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References

[1]: Substituting the Last Captured Group
[2]: Substituting the Entire Input String