Regex Issues

Replacing two expressions at once.

[adni18]

Hey.

Basically what I need to do is use search+replace for about twelve variables at once, rather than executing something like:

new String("apples and oranges").replace(/[stuff1]/g, stuff2).replace(/[stuff3]/g, stuff4);

because, conceivably, anything that stuff2 contains may match something in stuff3. This script needs to replace both stuff1 and stuff3 with both stuff2 and stuff4 at the same time. Any ideas? Thanks!

[DrDoc]

Your best bet is to use twelve different regular expressions. While many other languages have array type search and replace, JavaScript does not.

[adni18]

Oh well. :/. Thanks for the help anyway. :S

Edit: Is there a possibility in VBScript?

[Bernard Marx]

So, we're trying to replace a match, but avoid the result being affected by any of the other matches. I think this sort of thing does it.

I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to knock up a generic function that will do it without having to write the individual expressions twice. Here's the idea, anyhow.

str = "apple banana strange orange nipple apples"
res = str.replace(
    /[ai]pple[b][red]¦[/red][/b]orange/g,
    function(m)
    {
        if(/[ai]pple/.test(m))
            return "orange";
        else if (/orange/.test(m))
            return "apples";
    }
);
//
alert(res)

[DrDoc]

But, twelve variables, Bernard Marx? :o

[adni18]

Hmm. Maybe something that splits the string, then splits that string and splits that string and so on?

[Bernard Marx]

There are a few angles of attack. So far, I'm going for a generalised version of my previous.

Watch out for those ¦¦ as usual.

[pre]
String.prototype.replaceM = function(pairs, i){
  var regM=[];
  for(var k=-2,reg;reg=pairs[k+=2];)
    regM.push(reg.source);
  return this.replace(
    new RegExp(regM.join("¦"),"g"+(i¦¦"")),
    function(m){
      for(var k=-2,reg;reg=pairs[k+=2];)
        if(reg.test(m))
          return pairs[k+1];
    }
  );
}
pairs = [/[ax]aa/,"bbb",/bbb/,"ccc"]
alert("aaa bbb xaa".replaceM(pairs))
[/pre]