Replace multiple characters, by index, in a string quickly

Question

I\'m trying to quickly replace multiple characters in a string with another character such as *

For example, I have a string such as:

string         


        

Answer 1

We can use substring

v1 <- c(1, 4, 6, 9)
for(i in seq_along(v1)) substring(string, v1[i], v1[i]) <- "*"
#[1] "*bc*e*gh*j"

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As we are using stringi, another option is

library(stringi)
stri_sub_all(string, from = v1, length = 1) <- "*"
string
#[1] "*bc*e*gh*j"