Search and replace

Problem/Question/Abstract:

Search and replace

Answer:

Almost every text editor / word processor has the ability to search for a given string and replace it with another. If you're planning on adding similar functionality to your application, here's an example of where all of it can start:

function SearchAndReplace(
  sSrc, sLookFor, sReplaceWith
  : string)
  : string;
var
  nPos, nLenLookFor: integer;
begin
  nPos := Pos(sLookFor, sSrc);
  nLenLookFor := Length(sLookFor);
  while (nPos > 0) do
  begin
    Delete(sSrc, nPos, nLenLookFor);
    Insert(sReplaceWith, sSrc, nPos);
    nPos := Pos(sLookFor, sSrc);
  end;
  Result := sSrc;
end;

For example, let's say you have a string -- 'this,is,a,test' -- and you want to replace the commas with spaces. Here's how you'd call SearchAndReplace():

SearchAndReplace('this,is,a,test', ',', ' ')

SearchAndReplace() will now return the string 'this is a test'.