MATLAB: Do I receive unexpected results when performing string find and replace using STRREP in MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a)

charactersMATLABmultiplerepeatingstrfindstringsstrrep

When I try to perform a string replace as in the example below (with strings of repeating characters), MATLAB provides an unexpected result. It replaces each character in the string rather than the entire string.
x = 'abcd 2 efgh 22 ijkl 222 mnop 2222 qrst 22222 uvw 222222 xyz'
y = strfind(x, '22')
z = strrep(x, '22', '*')
results in:
 x =
 abcd 2 efgh 22 ijkl 222 mnop 2222 qrst 22222 uvw 222222 xyz
 y =
     13    21    22    30    31    32    40    41    42    43    50    51    52    53    54
 z =
 abcd 2 efgh * ijkl ** mnop *** qrst **** uvw ***** xyz

Best Answer

This change has been incorporated into the documentation in Release 2010a (R2010a). For previous releases, read below for any additional information:
This due to a full find being performed and then a replace. If the desired behavior is a find alternated with a replace (so that overlapping matches are not found) then REGEXPREP may be used.
An example that works as desired for the code above is:
regexprep(x, '22', '*')
 ans =
 abcd 2 efgh * ijkl *2 mnop ** qrst **2 uvw *** xyz
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