Fastest implementation to do multiple string substitutions in Python

Question

Is there any recommended way to do multiple string substitutions other than doing replace chaining on a string (i.e. text.replace(a, b).replace(c, d).repl

Answer 1

How fast? Also, how big are your strings?

There's a fairly simple recipe for building a regular expression to do the job on another site. It might need some tweaking to handle regex metacharacters; I didn't look too closely.

If that's not good enough, you probably need to write some C code, honestly. You can build a simple state machine to do all the replacements, and then process any string byte by byte with no backtracking along the machine to actually do the work. However, I doubt you will beat the regex engine without going to C and optimizing that.