How do I Search/Find and Replace in a standard string?

Question

How do I replace all occurrences of a substring with another string, for std::strings?

std::string s ("One hello, two hellos.");
s = s.replace("hello", "world");  // something like this

Answer 1

Using boost::replace_all:

#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp> // include Boost, a C++ library
...
std::string target("Would you like a foo of chocolate. Two foos of chocolate?");
boost::replace_all(target, "foo", "bar");

Answer 2

Why not implement your own replace?

void myReplace(std::string& str,
               const std::string& oldStr,
               const std::string& newStr)
{
  std::string::size_type pos = 0u;
  while((pos = str.find(oldStr, pos)) != std::string::npos){
     str.replace(pos, oldStr.length(), newStr);
     pos += newStr.length();
  }
}

Answer 3

In C++11, you can do this as a one-liner with a call to regex_replace:

#include <string>
#include <regex>

using std::string;

string do_replace( string const & in, string const & from, string const & to )
{
  return std::regex_replace( in, std::regex(from), to );
}

string test = "Remove all spaces";
std::cout << do_replace(test, " ", "") << std::endl;

output:

Removeallspaces

Answer 4

Why not return a modified string?

std::string ReplaceString(std::string subject, const std::string& search,
                          const std::string& replace) {
    size_t pos = 0;
    while((pos = subject.find(search, pos)) != std::string::npos) {
         subject.replace(pos, search.length(), replace);
         pos += replace.length();
    }
    return subject;
}

If you need performance, here is an optimized function that modifies the input string, it does not create a copy of the string:

void ReplaceStringInPlace(std::string& subject, const std::string& search,
                          const std::string& replace) {
    size_t pos = 0;
    while((pos = subject.find(search, pos)) != std::string::npos) {
         subject.replace(pos, search.length(), replace);
         pos += replace.length();
    }
}

Tests:

std::string input = "abc abc def";
std::cout << "Input string: " << input << std::endl;

std::cout << "ReplaceString() return value: " 
          << ReplaceString(input, "bc", "!!") << std::endl;
std::cout << "ReplaceString() input string not changed: " 
          << input << std::endl;

ReplaceStringInPlace(input, "bc", "??");
std::cout << "ReplaceStringInPlace() input string modified: " 
          << input << std::endl;

Output:

Input string: abc abc def
ReplaceString() return value: a!! a!! def
ReplaceString() input string not modified: abc abc def
ReplaceStringInPlace() input string modified: a?? a?? def

Answer 5

My templatized inline in-place find-and-replace:

template<class T>
int inline findAndReplace(T& source, const T& find, const T& replace)
{
    int num=0;
    typename T::size_t fLen = find.size();
    typename T::size_t rLen = replace.size();
    for (T::size_t pos=0; (pos=source.find(find, pos))!=T::npos; pos+=rLen)
    {
        num++;
        source.replace(pos, fLen, replace);
    }
    return num;
}

It returns a count of the number of items substituted (for use if you want to successively run this, etc). To use it:

std::string str = "one two three";
int n = findAndReplace(str, "one", "1");

Answer 6

Performant O(n) replace all

Many other answers repeatedly call std::string::replace, which requires the string to be overwritten repeatedly, which results in poor performance. In contrast, this uses a std::string buffer so that each character of the string is only traversed once:

void replace_all(
    std::string& s,
    std::string const& toReplace,
    std::string const& replaceWith
) {
    std::string buf;
    std::size_t pos = 0;
    std::size_t prevPos;

    // Reserves rough estimate of final size of string.
    buf.reserve(s.size());

    while (true) {
        prevPos = pos;
        pos = s.find(toReplace, pos);
        if (pos == std::string::npos)
            break;
        buf.append(s, prevPos, pos - prevPos);
        buf += replaceWith;
        pos += toReplace.size();
    }

    buf.append(s, prevPos, s.size() - prevPos);
    s.swap(buf);
}

Usage:

replace_all(s, "text to replace", "new text");

---

Full example:

#include <iostream>

void replace_all(
    std::string& s,
    std::string const& toReplace,
    std::string const& replaceWith
) {
    std::string buf;
    std::size_t pos = 0;
    std::size_t prevPos;

    // Reserves rough estimate of final size of string.
    buf.reserve(s.size());

    while (true) {
        prevPos = pos;
        pos = s.find(toReplace, pos);
        if (pos == std::string::npos)
            break;
        buf.append(s, prevPos, pos - prevPos);
        buf += replaceWith;
        pos += toReplace.size();
    }

    buf.append(s, prevPos, s.size() - prevPos);
    s.swap(buf);
}

int main() {
    std::string s("hello hello, mademoiselle!");
    replace_all(s, "hello", "bye");
    std::cout << s << std::endl;
}

Output:

bye bye, mademoiselle!

---

Note: Previous versions of this answer used std::ostringstream, which has some overhead. The latest version uses std::string::append instead, as recommended by @LouisGo.

Answer 7

The easiest way (offering something near what you wrote) is to use Boost.Regex, specifically regex_replace.

std::string has built in find() and replace() methods, but they are more cumbersome to work with as they require dealing with indices and string lengths.

Answer 8

I believe this would work. It takes const char*'s as a parameter.

//params find and replace cannot be NULL
void FindAndReplace( std::string& source, const char* find, const char* replace )
{
   //ASSERT(find != NULL);
   //ASSERT(replace != NULL);
   size_t findLen = strlen(find);
   size_t replaceLen = strlen(replace);
   size_t pos = 0;

   //search for the next occurrence of find within source
   while ((pos = source.find(find, pos)) != std::string::npos)
   {
      //replace the found string with the replacement
      source.replace( pos, findLen, replace );

      //the next line keeps you from searching your replace string, 
      //so your could replace "hello" with "hello world" 
      //and not have it blow chunks.
      pos += replaceLen; 
   }
}

Answer 9

#include <string>

using std::string;

void myReplace(string& str,
               const string& oldStr,
               const string& newStr) {
  if (oldStr.empty()) {
    return;
  }

  for (size_t pos = 0; (pos = str.find(oldStr, pos)) != string::npos;) {
    str.replace(pos, oldStr.length(), newStr);
    pos += newStr.length();
  }
}

The check for oldStr being empty is important. If for whatever reason that parameter is empty you will get stuck in an infinite loop.

But yeah use the tried and tested C++11 or Boost solution if you can.

Answer 10

// Replace all occurrences of searchStr in str with replacer
// Each match is replaced only once to prevent an infinite loop
// The algorithm iterates once over the input and only concatenates 
// to the output, so it should be reasonably efficient
std::string replace(const std::string& str, const std::string& searchStr, 
    const std::string& replacer)
{
    // Prevent an infinite loop if the input is empty
    if (searchStr == "") {
        return str;
    }

    std::string result = "";
    size_t pos = 0;
    size_t pos2 = str.find(searchStr, pos);

    while (pos2 != std::string::npos) {
        result += str.substr(pos, pos2-pos) + replacer;
        pos = pos2 + searchStr.length();
        pos2 = str.find(searchStr, pos);
    }

    result += str.substr(pos, str.length()-pos);
    return result;
}