What is an efficient way to replace many characters in a string?

Question

String handling in Java is something I\'m trying to learn to do well. Currently I want to take in a string and replace any characters I find.

Here is my current inef

Answer 1

I just implemented this utility class that replaces a char or a group of chars of a String. It is equivalent to bash tr and perl tr///, aka, transliterate. I hope it helps someone!

package your.package.name;

/**
 * Utility class that replaces chars of a String, aka, transliterate.
 * 
 * It's equivalent to bash 'tr' and perl 'tr///'.
 *
 */
public class ReplaceChars {

    public static String replace(String string, String from, String to) {
        return new String(replace(string.toCharArray(), from.toCharArray(), to.toCharArray()));
    }

    public static char[] replace(char[] chars, char[] from, char[] to) {

        char[] output = chars.clone();
        for (int i = 0; i < output.length; i++) {
            for (int j = 0; j < from.length; j++) {
                if (output[i] == from[j]) {
                    output[i] = to[j];
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return output;
    }

    /**
     * For tests!
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        // Example from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_cipher
        String string = "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG";
        String from = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
        String to = "XYZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW";

        System.out.println();
        System.out.println("Cesar cypher: " + string);
        System.out.println("Result:       " + ReplaceChars.replace(string, from, to));
    }
}

This is the output:

Cesar cypher: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
Result:       QEB NRFZH YOLTK CLU GRJMP LSBO QEB IXWV ALD