Question

I would like to write a function replace-several that receives a string and a set of replacements and apply all the replacements (where the replacements see the result of the previous replacements).

I thought about the following interface:

(replace-several "abc" #"a" "c" 
                       #"b" "l"
                       #"c" "j"); should return "jlj" 

Two questions:

1. Is it the most idiomatic interface in clojure?
2. How to implement this function?

Remark: To make a single replacement, there is replace available in clojure.string.

Answer 1

Implementing @kotarak’s advice using replace, reduce and partition:

(defn replace-several [content & replacements]
      (let [replacement-list (partition 2 replacements)]
        (reduce #(apply string/replace %1 %2) content replacement-list)))
; => (replace-several "abc" #"a" "c" #"b" "l" #"c" "j")
  "jlj"