[New Feature]: Add regex escape utility or literal string replaceAll method

[anjuchamantha]

Description

Description

Ballerina currently lacks a built-in way to escape regex metacharacters when building regex patterns from user/config strings, or to perform literal string replacement without regex matching.

Use Case

When replacing literal strings (e.g., FHIR base URLs) in text, developers need to use re ${baseUrl}.replaceAll(...), but this treats baseUrl as a regex pattern. URLs contain metacharacters like . and ? which cause false-positive matches.

For example:

• If baseUrl = https://fhir.example.com
• The pattern re https://fhir.example.com`` treats . as "match any character"
• This would incorrectly match https://fhirXexampleYcom

Current Limitations

1. replaceAll() is only available on RegExp objects and always performs regex matching
2. lang.regexp module doesn't expose an escape() function to escape metacharacters
3. No lang.string.replaceAll() method for literal string replacement exists

Proposed Solutions

One of the following would address this:

1. Add a regexp:escape(string) function that escapes regex metacharacters
2. Add a string.replaceAll(literal, replacement) method for literal string replacement
3. Document a recommended pattern for safely building regex from literal strings

Related Discussion

This issue was identified during code review of a FHIR URL rewriting utility:

• PR: [FHIR Connector] Add a general proxy function to forward requests to FHIR server with url rewrite module-ballerinax-health.clients#55
• Discussion: [FHIR Connector] Add a general proxy function to forward requests to FHIR server with url rewrite module-ballerinax-health.clients#55 (comment)

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-> Compilation

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