Fastest method to replace all instances of a character in a string [duplicate]

Answer 1

I think the real answer is that it completely depends on what your inputs look like. I created a JsFiddle to try a bunch of these and a couple of my own against various inputs. No matter how I look at the results, I see no clear winner.

• RegExp wasn't the fastest in any of the test cases, but it wasn't bad either.
• Split/Join approach seems fastest for sparse replacements.

• This one I wrote seems fastest for small inputs and dense replacements:

  function replaceAllOneCharAtATime(inSource, inToReplace, inReplaceWith) {
      var output="";
      var firstReplaceCompareCharacter = inToReplace.charAt(0);
      var sourceLength = inSource.length;
      var replaceLengthMinusOne = inToReplace.length - 1;
      for(var i = 0; i < sourceLength; i++){
          var currentCharacter = inSource.charAt(i);
          var compareIndex = i;
          var replaceIndex = 0;
          var sourceCompareCharacter = currentCharacter;
          var replaceCompareCharacter = firstReplaceCompareCharacter;
          while(true){
              if(sourceCompareCharacter != replaceCompareCharacter){
              output += currentCharacter;
              break;
          }
          if(replaceIndex >= replaceLengthMinusOne) {
              i+=replaceLengthMinusOne;
              output += inReplaceWith;
              //was a match
              break;
          }
          compareIndex++; replaceIndex++;
          if(i >= sourceLength){
              // not a match
              break;
          }
          sourceCompareCharacter = inSource.charAt(compareIndex)
              replaceCompareCharacter = inToReplace.charAt(replaceIndex);
          }   
          replaceCompareCharacter += currentCharacter;
      }
      return output;
  }