How to replace a character in a string

There are a few ways. One way is to use AppleScript's text item delimiters, another is to use one of the many shell script utilities.

on run -- example      display dialog quoted form of replaceText("This:is:some:test:text:", ":", space)      display dialog quoted form of (do shell script "echo \"" & "This:is:some:test:text:" & "\" | sed 's/:/ /g'") end run to replaceText(someText, oldItem, newItem)      (*      replace all occurances of oldItem with newItem           parameters -     someText [text]: the text containing the item(s) to change                     oldItem [text, list of text]: the item to be replaced                     newItem [text]: the item to replace with           returns [text]:     the text with the item(s) replaced      *)      set {tempTID, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, oldItem}      try           set {itemList, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {text items of someText, newItem}           set {someText, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {itemList as text, tempTID}      on error errorMessage number errorNumber -- oops           set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tempTID           error errorMessage number errorNumber -- pass it on      end try            return someText end replaceText

Red_menace has suggested the best method. Here's another one:

replace("iii", "a", "iiibriiiciiidiiibriii") --> "abracadabra"

on replace(A, B, theText)

set L to length of A

set K to L - 1

set P to offset of A in theText

repeat until P = 0

if P = 1 then

set theText to B & text (L + 1) through -1 of theText

else if P = (length of theText) - K then

set theText to text 1 through -(L + 1) of theText & B

else

set theText to text 1 through (P - 1) of theText & B & text (P + L) through -1 of theText

end if

set P to offset of A in theText

end repeat

return theText

end replace

See offset in the AppleScript Language Guide.

Message was edited by: Pierre L.

When you get info for anItem, it returns a record containing various information, such as the name. Later, you are setting a new value for the name property of this record, rather than the file item. Note that info for has been deprecated for a while, so you should avoid using it and use the Finder or System Events instead. Also note that the name of a file/folder includes the extension, so you might want to make sure you are dealing with just the name part.

propertySS : "."

propertyRS : " "

tellapplication"Finder"

repeatwithanItemin (gettheselection) -- step through each item of the selection

setnameofanItemtomyreplaceText(nameofanItem, SS, RS)

endrepeat

endtell

toreplaceText(someText, oldItem, newItem)

set {tempTID, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, oldItem}

try

set {itemList, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {text itemsofsomeText, newItem}

set {someText, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {itemListastext, tempTID}

onerrorerrorMessagenumbererrorNumber-- oops

setAppleScript's text item delimiterstotempTID

errorerrorMessagenumbererrorNumber-- pass it on

endtry

returnsomeText

endreplaceText

just to add to the noise, I keep this handler around to handle text items. the nice thing about it is that it converts both ways: if you give it a string it returns text items, if you give it a list it returns a string.

set t to "a.b.c.d.e"

set t to tid(t, ".") -- converts to a list of text items

set t to tid(t, " ") -- converts back to tex a list odf text items

-- result "a b c d e"

on tid(input, delim)

set {oldTID, my text item delimiters} to {my text item delimiters, delim}

if class of input is list then

set output to input as text

else

set output to text items of input

end if

set my text item delimiters to oldTID

return output

end tid