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33.20 Substituting for a Character Code

The following functions replace characters within a specified region based on their character codes.

Function: subst-char-in-region start end old-char new-char &optional noundo ¶

This function replaces all occurrences of the character old-char with the character new-char in the region of the current buffer defined by start and end. Both characters must have the same length of their multibyte form.

If noundo is non-nil, then subst-char-in-region does not record the change for undo and does not mark the buffer as modified. This was useful for controlling the old selective display feature (see Selective Display).

subst-char-in-region does not move point and returns nil.

---------- Buffer: foo ----------
This is the contents of the buffer before.
---------- Buffer: foo ----------

(subst-char-in-region 1 20 ?i ?X)
     ⇒ nil

---------- Buffer: foo ----------
ThXs Xs the contents of the buffer before.
---------- Buffer: foo ----------

Function: subst-char-in-string fromchar tochar string &optional inplace ¶

This function replaces all occurrences of the character fromchar with tochar in string. By default, substitution occurs in a copy of string, but if the optional argument inplace is non-nil, the function modifies the string itself. In any case, the function returns the resulting string.

Command: translate-region start end table ¶

This function applies a translation table to the characters in the buffer between positions start and end.

The translation table table is a string or a char-table; (aref table ochar) gives the translated character corresponding to ochar. If table is a string, any characters with codes larger than the length of table are not altered by the translation.

The return value of translate-region is the number of characters that were actually changed by the translation. This does not count characters that were mapped into themselves in the translation table.