1. Im sorry your antisocial, everyones my buddy (i might get a free beer that way)
2. well how to do that was explained, if it doesnt fit your requirements a short script can do a single pass search and replace (qwerty even wrote ya one)
3. are you sepeculating on what khaled was doing or can you back that up with a comparable replace function?
4. the fact that you call it a bug multiple times doesnt make it one either, and the fact that I and others well be using this feature of the $replace is a verygood reason not to change the feature (behavour would have been a better word i guess).
heres an example of something that might need/use this behavour

Code:
 
setup {
  window -c @window
  ;
  ; a window exists as follows...
  window -el -t15,30,45,60,75 @window
  ;
  ; example line in window
  aline -l @window $+(first,$chr(9),second,$chr(9),third,$chr(9),forth,$chr(9),fifth,$chr(9),sixth)
  aline -l @window - 
  aline -l @window $replace($+(--->first,$chr(9),-->second,$chr(9),->third,$chr(9),>forth,$chr(9),->fifth,$chr(9),--->sixth),-,$chr(160))

}
;
example1 {
  rline @window 1 $replace( $+($chr(2),$line(@window,1,1)) ,$chr(9),$+($chr(9),$chr(2)) ,$+($chr(2),$chr(2)),$null )
}
;
example2 {
  rline @window 3 $replace( $+(-,$line(@window,3,1)) ,$chr(160),-, $chr(9),$chr(9) $+ - ,------->,>------- ,>-,> ,-,$chr(160) )
}


/setup
/example1
;^ switches bold of and on (not the same as just adding a bold at the front due to the way Tabs work
/example2
;^ pushes across the text tell 8 squares then cycles the pushing pointer

Each of those examples could be used in a legit type script, and rely apon the behavour of $replace to rescan the text after each search and replace value.