I am basically looking for a function that will take 2 lists (call them @a and @b for now) and replace all occurrences of @a in a string ($str) with @b.

Now that may seem simple, but this is done within a loop, so the regular expression keeps getting compiled, providing the same response on each loop. So whatever the first loop returns, the subsequent loops return.

HELP!

You'll see what I mean if you run this code. I have tried everything I can think of. Am I WAY overcomplicating this or is this not as simple as I think?

I have other languages that just have a "replacelist" function - you know... provide a string, with 2 lists, and all occurrences of list1 in string are replaced by list2. Does this exist anywhere?

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my @animals = ( "bear<1>\n", "camel<0> <2>\n", "<2>horse\n", "duck<3>\
+n" );
my @changeTo = ( 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D' );
my @toFind = ( '<0>', '<1>', '<2>', '<3>' );

my $k = 0;
while($k < 5) {
    print map( change(\$_, \@toFind, \@changeTo) , @animals );
    my $t = shift(@changeTo);
    my $r = int(rand(100));
    push(@changeTo, $r);
    print "\n$k:\n" . "@changeTo" . "\n";;
    $k++;
}

sub change {
    my $str = shift;
    my $toFind = shift;
    my $changeTo = shift;
    my @f = @$toFind;
    my @c = @$changeTo;
    my $i = 0;
    foreach my $find (@f) {
        my $change = $c[$i];
        $$str =~ s/$find/$change/gi;
        $i++;
    }
    return $$str;
}
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