Executing multiple replacement regexps against a string

Question

I wanted to write a function that "auto-corrects" a string, based on a list of regular expressions and their respective replacements.

I've come up with this, and it works:

(setq auto-corrections-dictionary
  [
   [ "cat" "lion"]
   [ "horse" "zebra" ]
  ])

(defun auto-correct (string)
  (interactive)
  (car (last (mapcar
               (lambda (regexp-replacement-pair)
                 (setq string
                   (replace-regexp-in-string
                     (aref regexp-replacement-pair 0)
                     (aref regexp-replacement-pair 1)
                     string)))
                 auto-corrections-dictionary))))

(auto-correct "The cat chased the horse.")
    => "The lion chased the zebra."

Since I'm brand new to Emacs and Lisp, I have a couple of questions:

• string is the function's argument. Within mapcar's lambda function I repeatedly set the value of string to the latest auto-corrected string, so that I don't lose any previous replacements. Is that the correct pattern? Is there a more "Lisp-y" way to do that?
• mapcar returns a list of strings, with one element for each consecutive replacement. I'm only interested in the last element, which is the final result of the function. However, this seems wasteful when I think of memory use and (possibly) performance. Should I be concerned? Should I have used something else instead of mapcar?
• Any other comments along the lines of "nah, here's how to do it properly..."?
• Finally: is there a builtin function I could have used instead of writing my function? ;)

Answer 1

I would use a list of conses for the dictionary, and reduce to apply to the corrections:

(setq auto-corrections-dictionary
      '(("cat" . "lion")
        ("horse" . "zebra" )))

(defun auto-correct (string)
  (seq-reduce
   (lambda (string regexp-replacement-pair)
     (replace-regexp-in-string
      (car regexp-replacement-pair)
      (cdr regexp-replacement-pair)
      string))
   auto-corrections-dictionary
   string))

Also, I see no point in making the function interactive.