Replace a specific portion of a string

I have a cell array of strings,

'SPY US 09/17/11 P118 Equity'
'XOM US 08/20/11 P72.5 Equity'
'AAPL US 12/17/11 P375 Equity'
....

I would like to keep the left side and the right side but replace the dates all into say 01/01/11. So the output could be:

'SPY US 01/01/11 P118 Equity'
'XOM US 01/01/11 P72.5 Equity'
'AAPL US 01/01/11 P375 Equity'
....

Anyone know a quick way? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

[Oleg Komarov]

cs = {'SPY US 09/17/11 P118 Equity'
      'XOM US 08/20/11 P72.5 Equity'
      'AAPL US 12/17/11 P375 Equity'};

regexprep(cs, '\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{2}','01/01/11')

[Zoe Zhang]

Aha, exactly I wanted (as I said below...) Thanks so much~~

Answer 2

[Zoe Zhang]

>> ticker = 'SPY US 09/17/11 P118 Equity'; >> position = findstr('/',ticker)

position =

    10    13

>> ticker(position(1)-2:position(2)+2) = '01/01/11'

ticker =

SPY US 01/01/11 P118 Equity

There should be a easier way right? Some thing like modifiedStr = strrep('SPY US 09/17/11 P118 Equity', '$$/$$/$$','01/01/01')