Manipulating single characters inside a string?

Hello CF Experts,

I feel a little stupid having to ask this, but I might be suffering from mental block:

I need to manipulate single characters inside a string. Lets say I have a string "-----" (5 hyphens) and

I want to replace the hyphen at position #pos# with "X".

I tried using the Mid() function, but that apparently is read-only:

     <cfset Mid(string,#pos#,1) = "X">   

results in an error.

Of course I can do string concatenation like

     <cfset string = Mid(string,1,#pos#-1) & "X" & Mid(string,#pos#+1,Len(string)-#pos#)

or use the Insert/RemoveChars functions:

     <cfset string = Insert("X",string,#pos#-1)>

     <cfset string = RemoveChars(string,#pos#+1,1)>

but this seems awfully awkward.

There must be a more elegant solution. Any hints?

Regards, Richard