crack the code interview 1.5

Write a method to replace all spaces in a string with ‘%20’.

char * replace(char * chr)
{
    char * start = chr;
    int length = 0;
    int n_space = 0;
    while (*start != '\0')
    {
        length ++;
        start ++;
        if (*start == ' ')
            n_space ++;
    }
    start = chr;
    char * newchr = new char[length + 2 * n_space + 1];
    newchr[length + 2 * n_space] = '\0';
    start = chr;
    while (*start != '\0')
    {
        if (*start == ' ')
        {
            *newchr++ = '%';
            *newchr++ = '2';
            *newchr++ = '0';
        }
        else
        {
            *newchr++ = *start;
        }
        start ++;
    }
    return newchr;
}