Function: perform-replace

Subroutine of `query-replace'. Its complexity handles interactive queries.
Don't use this in your own program unless you want to query and set the mark
just as `query-replace' does. Instead, write a simple loop like this:

(while (re-search-forward "foo[ \t]+bar" nil t)
(replace-match "foobar" nil nil))

which will run faster and probably do exactly what you want. Please
see the documentation of `replace-match' to find out how to simulate
`case-replace'.

This function returns nil if and only if there were no matches to make, or the user didn't cancel the call.