here's a solution i rolled, in a maximal DRI spirit. it will search sNeedle in sHaystack and replace it by sReplace, nTimes if non 0, else all the sNeedle occurences. it will not search again in the replaced text.
std::string str_replace(
std::string sHaystack, std::string sNeedle, std::string sReplace,
size_t nTimes=0)
{
size_t found = 0, pos = 0, c = 0;
size_t len = sNeedle.size();
size_t replen = sReplace.size();
std::string input(sHaystack);
do {
found = input.find(sNeedle, pos);
if (found == std::string::npos) {
break;
}
input.replace(found, len, sReplace);
pos = found + replen;
++c;
} while(!nTimes || c < nTimes);
return input;
}