$replaceText — Replace Text

$replaceText performs a global find-and-replace on a string. Every occurrence of the search substring is replaced with the replacement string. It is one of the most commonly used text manipulation functions in BDFD.

Syntax

$replaceText[input;search;replacement]

Parameters

• input (string, required) — The text to operate on. Can be a literal string, a variable, or any expression resolving to text.
• search (string, required) — The exact substring to find. Case-sensitive. Matches are literal, not regex.
• replacement (string, required) — The string to insert in place of each match. Pass an empty value to remove occurrences.

Return Value

• Type: string
• Returns the modified text with all matches replaced.

Evaluation Behavior

$replaceText can be evaluated either at compile-time or runtime, depending on its arguments:

• If all arguments are static (no variables or placeholders), replacement happens at compile time.
• If any argument contains placeholders (e.g., $message, $getUserVar[...]), it is evaluated at runtime.

Usage

Basic Replacement

$replaceText[I like cats;cats;dogs]  → "I like dogs"

Removal (empty replacement)

$replaceText[remove-all-dashes;-;]  → "removealldashes"

Placeholder Cleanup

$replaceText[$getUserVar[bio];\n; ]

Chaining Replacements

$replaceText[$replaceText[$message;@;];#;]

This first removes all @ characters, then all # characters.

Common Patterns

Censoring Words

$replaceText[$message;badword;\*\*\*\*]

Normalizing Input

$replaceText[$toLowercase[$message];  ; ]

Removes double spaces after lowercasing.

Formatting for Display

$var[clean;$replaceText[$getUserVar[rawText];\n;, ]]

Important Notes

• Case-sensitive: $replaceText[Hello;h;H] will NOT replace — h ≠ H.
• Global replacement: All occurrences are replaced, not just the first.
• Literal only: No regex support. The search string is matched exactly.
• Order matters in chaining: Nest $replaceText calls carefully when doing multiple replacements, as earlier replacements may affect later ones.