Question

I have a sequence of replace methods, including regular expressions. They are all put together like this:

motivation = motivation.replace('death','life').replace('sad','happy').replace(/fu+ck/gi,'yay!').replace('darkness','light');

Is there a way to organize this to be more readable? Not having to repeat “replace” all the time would be a good start. I also have access to the Mootools library.

Answer 1

Here’s the simplest thing I can think of: clever indentation.

motivation = motivation.replace('death','life')
   .replace('sad','happy')
   .replace(/fu+ck/gi,'yay!')
   .replace('darkness','light');

Another option is just to use something like Array.each (I think that’s in Mootools):

Array.each([['death', 'life'],['sad', 'happy'],[/fu+ck/gi, 'yay!'],
            ['darkness', 'light']],
    function (pair) { motivation = motivation.replace(pair[0], pair[1]); });

This only really makes sense for very long lists of replacements.