Question

Is there an easy way to replace a sub-list of strings in a character vector with another list of strings? something like

gsub(c("a","b"),c("z","y"),a)

or

replace(a,c("a","b"),c("z","y"))

neither of which unfortunately work?

Answer 1

A simple loop using gsub would suffice and will probably perform just fine in most cases:

a <- c("x","y")
b <- c("a","b")
vec <- "xy12"

 mgsub <- function(pattern,replacement,x,...){
    for (i in seq_along(pattern)){
        x <- gsub(pattern = pattern[i],replacement = replacement[i],x,...)
    }
    x
 }

> mgsub(a,b,vec)
[1] "ab12"