Re: second simple problem
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg99760] Re: second simple problem
- From: Szabolcs Horvát <szhorvat at gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 05:09:12 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <gu666q$9tf$1@smc.vnet.net> <gu8ugd$6se$1@smc.vnet.net>
Peter Pein wrote: > Francisco Gutierrez schrieb: >> Dear sirs: >> I have the following list: >> ex={1,5,7,4,"M",6,7,8,9,1,"M",3} >> I want to replace the M's in the following way: the first M by 5, and the second by2. >> Thus I have a replacement list >> rL={5,2} >> The problem is to get ={1,5,7,4,5,6,7,8,9,1,2,3} >> How can I do this in the most general form (for any length of ex and any number of values of "M")? >> Thanks >> Francisco >> > Hi Francisco, > sorry for not answering. > Can anyone please explain, why the "obvious" > Fold[Replace[#1, "M" -> #2] &, ex, {a, b}] > leads to an unchanged "ex"? It is nearly 3 am and I guess it is better to go > to sleep, than to try to solve this one. Hi Peter, You fell into the mistake of thinking that Replace will replace only the first match in a list. The difference between Replace and ReplaceAll is that Replace works on the whole expression by default, and not on any subparts. We can tell it to work at a specific depth, e.g. Replace[list, a->b, {1}] replaces elements of the list, but this will replace *all* elements of list that match. I cannot remember if there is a function/syntax that replaces only the first element found, and I cannot find one in the docs right now. If you discover a simple way to do that, please let me know! Perhaps we can use Replace[#1, {be___, "M", en___} :> {be, #2, en}] &, but that is rather ugly.