Replace multiple strings at once

Common Mistake

Nearly all answers on this page use cumulative replacement and thus suffer the same flaw where replacement strings are themselves subject to replacement. Here are a couple examples where this pattern fails (h/t @KurokiKaze @derekdreery):

function replaceCumulative(str, find, replace) {
  for (var i = 0; i < find.length; i++)
    str = str.replace(new RegExp(find[i],"g"), replace[i]);
  return str;
};

// Fails in some cases:
console.log( replaceCumulative( "tar pit", ['tar','pit'], ['capitol','house'] ) );
console.log( replaceCumulative( "you & me", ['you','me'], ['me','you'] ) );

Solution

function replaceBulk( str, findArray, replaceArray ){
  var i, regex = [], map = {}; 
  for( i=0; i<findArray.length; i++ ){ 
    regex.push( findArray[i].replace(/([-[\]{}()*+?.\\^$|#,])/g,'\\$1') );
    map[findArray[i]] = replaceArray[i]; 
  }
  regex = regex.join('|');
  str = str.replace( new RegExp( regex, 'g' ), function(matched){
    return map[matched];
  });
  return str;
}

// Test:
console.log( replaceBulk( "tar pit", ['tar','pit'], ['capitol','house'] ) );
console.log( replaceBulk( "you & me", ['you','me'], ['me','you'] ) );

Note:

This is a more compatible variation of @elchininet's solution, which uses map() and Array.indexOf() and thus won't work in IE8 and older.

@elchininet's implementation holds truer to PHP's str_replace(), because it also allows strings as find/replace parameters, and will use the first find array match if there are duplicates (my version will use the last). I didn't accept strings in this implementation because that case is already handled by JS's built-in String.replace().

You could extend the String object with your own function that does what you need (useful if there's ever missing functionality):

String.prototype.replaceArray = function(find, replace) {
  var replaceString = this;
  for (var i = 0; i < find.length; i++) {
    replaceString = replaceString.replace(find[i], replace[i]);
  }
  return replaceString;
};

For global replace you could use regex:

String.prototype.replaceArray = function(find, replace) {
  var replaceString = this;
  var regex; 
  for (var i = 0; i < find.length; i++) {
    regex = new RegExp(find[i], "g");
    replaceString = replaceString.replace(regex, replace[i]);
  }
  return replaceString;
};

To use the function it'd be similar to your PHP example:

var textarea = $(this).val();
var find = ["<", ">", "\n"];
var replace = ["&lt;", "&gt;", "<br/>"];
textarea = textarea.replaceArray(find, replace);