docs: def _policyFileReplaceOrAppendList(string_list, policy_data):
      '''
      helper function to take a list of strings for registry.pol file data and
      update existing strings or append the strings
      '''
      if not policy_data:
          policy_data = b''
      # we are going to clean off the special pre-fixes, so we get only the valuename
      specialValueRegex = salt.utils.stringutils.to_bytes(r'(\*\*Del\.|\*\*DelVals\.){0,1}')
      for this_string in string_list:
          list_item_key = this_string.split(b'\00;')[0].lstrip(b'[')
          list_item_value_name = re.sub(specialValueRegex,
                                        b'',
                                        this_string.split(b'\00;')[1],
                                        flags=re.IGNORECASE)
          log.debug('item value name is %s', list_item_value_name)
          data_to_replace = _regexSearchKeyValueCombo(policy_data,
                                                      list_item_key,
                                                      list_item_value_name)
          if data_to_replace:
              log.debug('replacing %s with %s', data_to_replace, this_string)
              policy_data = policy_data.replace(data_to_replace, this_string)
          else:
              log.debug('appending %s', this_string)
              policy_data = b''.join([policy_data, this_string])
      return policy_data