var str = "This is a string";
var thing = str.replace("string","thing");
console.log( str )
>> "This is a string"
console.log( thing )
>> "This is a thing"
Is there another method I can use, besides replace, that will alter the string in place without giving me a new string object?
No, strings in JavaScript are immutable.
string = string.replace("string", "thing");Not that i am aware of, however if the reason you want to do this is just to keep your code clean you can just assign the new string the the old variable:
var string = "This is a string";
string = string.replace("string", "thing");
Of course this will just make the code look a bit cleaner and still create a new string.
There is a reason why strings are immutable. As Javascript use call-by-sharing technic, mutable string would be a problem in this case :
function thinger(str) {
return str.replace("string", "thing");
}
var str = "This is a str";
var thing = thinger(str);
In this situation you want your string to be passed by value, but it is not. If str was mutable, thinger would change str, that would be a really strange effect.
As Cristian Sanchez mentioned, in javascript strings are immutable. Depending on the task we can try to work around with the following approaches:
// **fastest** .split(...).join(...)
var string = 'My string'
string = string.split('string').join('thing')
console.info('with .split-.join', { string }) // 'My thing'
// **good old wine** .replace('...','...') as mentioned above
string = 'My string'
string = string.replace('string','thing')
console.info('with .replace', { string }) // 'My thing'
// **ES6 string interpolation**
string = (arg) => `My ${arg}`
console.info('with interpolation 1', { string: string('string') }) // 'My string'
console.info('with interpolation 2', { string: string('thing') }) // 'My thing'Note: there are fancy ways with such approaches as ..indexOf(...) and .substring(...), .charAt(...),
string) when defining variable names in any language.stringis not a reserved word in JavaScript (source). However,strisundefined. You messed up the variable names!