Question

Here’s what I have so far:

string stripSymbols(string str) {
    int stringSize = strlen(str.c_str());

    for (int i = 0; i < stringSize; i++)
        if (str[i] == 0x46)
            str[i] = 0x32;
    return str;
}

I know the ascii codes are probably wrong. That’s part of the problem. But once I figure those out, I was thinking I could maybe put a switch in here for each symbol that would replace each symbol with an empty space.

Or better yet, I could have a for loop in my for loop that loops through a string of symbols and replaces any that match with the user’s input with an empty space.

I have a couple ideas, but I was wondering if there was a more efficient way of doing this.

Update 1:

This code looks a little better and works:

string stripSymbols(string str) {
    int stringSize = str.size();
    for (int i = 0; i < stringSize; i++)
        if (str[i] == '.')
            str[i] = ' ';
    return str;
}

But the replies offer a more efficient solution.

Update 2:

Solution inspired by Kerrek SB’s reply:

char symbols [] = {'!', '?', ',', '\'', '.'};
int symbols_size = sizeof(symbols) / sizeof(char);  

for (int j = 0; j < symbols_size; j++)
    replace(str.begin(), str.end(), symbols[j], ' ');

Answer 1

If I were going for a robust solution I’d probably just use boost::regex_replace:

// regex with illegal characters
std::string output = boost::regex_replace(str, "[!@#%]", " ");

Documentation