1 Macro functions

Overview

Macro functions offer the ability to customize macro values.

Sometimes a macro may resolve to a value that is not necessarily easy to work with. It may be long or contain a specific substring of interest that you would like to extract. This is where macro functions can be useful.

The syntax of a macro function is:

{<macro>.<func>(<params>)}

where:

• <macro> - the macro to customize (for example {ITEM.VALUE} or {#LLDMACRO})

• <func> - the function to apply

• <params> - a comma-delimited list of function parameters. Parameters must be quoted if they start with (space), " or contain ), ,.

For example:

{{TIME}.fmttime(format,time_shift)}
{{ITEM.VALUE}.regsub(pattern, output)}
{{#LLDMACRO}.regsub(pattern, output)}

Supported macro functions

If a function is used in a supported location, but applied to a macro not supporting macro functions, then the macro evaluates to ‘UNKNOWN’.

If pattern is not a correct regular expression then the macro evaluates to ‘UNKNOWN’ (excluding low-level discovery macros where the function will be ignored in that case and macro will remain unexpanded)

If a macro function is applied to the macro in locations not supporting macro functions then the function is ignored.

Examples

The ways in which macro functions can be used to customize macro values is illustrated in the following examples on received values: