Add str.replace

[Uwe L. Korn]

• ✔️ pandas function
• ✔️ Python function
• ❌ C++ STL function
• ❌ needs a regular expression library
• ? maybe needs a Unicode database
• ❌ cannot pre-compute output size

replace(…, regex=False) is a simpler case and can done without a regex library.

Pseudo-Code:

Inputs: pat, repl, n, case, regex

builder = StringBuilder()
for row in rows:
    if isnull(row)
        builder.addnull()
    else:
        if regex:
            builder.add(re.sub(pat, row, repl))
        else:
            builder.add(row.sub(pat, repl))