OUString replace(sal_Unicode, sal_Unicode)

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 10/01/2013 05:05 PM, Matteo Casalin wrote:
>      OUString provides the metod replace(sal_Unicode, sal_Unicode), which seems to be not widely used, while there are for sure some replaceAll("a", "b") calls here and there.
> Would it be fine to rename the former to replaceAll(sal_Unicode, sal_Unicode) for consistency, fix the current calls and then slowly convert all of the call-places of the latter (which I think to be be less efficient)?
> If any backward compatibility is needed, replace could be kept and just call the related replaceAll.

Not too sure that would really be worth it:

* Single-character replacement is different from multi-character 
replacement in that it doesn't need to specify how to handle cases where 
one replacement gives rise to further replacement opportunities. 
(That's why there originally only was a replaceFirst for the 
multi-character case, to avoid having to make a decision.)

* There is no support for fromIndex in replace.

* replace is an inline function, so it could be replaced (no pun 
intended) with "only" becoming build-time, not runtime incompatible. 
Keeping it around and having two inline functions doing the same trivial 
thing to avoid that looks like a bit too much overhead to me.

* The underlying C function is called rtl_uString_newReplace, not 
..._rewReplaceAll (and /that/ couldn't be changed without breaking ABI).

Stephan