I have a symbol font that I'm using (with the help of IcoMoon) for symbols within other text in multiple text objects. I use a different (normal) font for the rest of the text. I'd like to be able to do a "Find + Replace All" to find all instances of the ligatures for my symbol glyphs (e.g., ".energy.") and change the font face for just those substrings to the symbol font. I can do this with an external script with the xml, but then I have to make sure I don't have conflicting flowSpan ids, and it just adds another dependency and potential point of failure.

What's the simplest way I can Find one thing and Replace another (functionally inserting flowSpans)?