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.