CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregexstringreplace
user754730
user754730

Reputation: 1340

Replacing a space and some other character in Java

Why does this code not work?

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String s = "You need the new version for this. Please update app ...";
    System.out.println(s.replaceAll(". ", ".\\\\n").replaceAll(" ...", "..."));
}

This is my wanted output:

You need the new version for this.\nPlease update app...

Thanks for the information

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2886

Answers (4)

Rohit Jain
Rohit Jain

Reputation: 213223

String.replaceAll method takes Regex as first argument.

So you need to escape your dot (.), as it has special meaning in Regex, which matches any character.

System.out.println(s.replaceAll("\\. ", ".\\\\n").replaceAll(" \\.\\.\\.", "..."));

However, for your given input, you can simply use String.replace method, as it does not take Regex, and has an added advantage of that.

Upvotes: 3

arshajii
arshajii

Reputation: 129497

You shouldn't be using replaceAll - use replace instead. replaceAll takes a regular expression when it is not needed here (and hence it will be unnecessarily inefficient).

String s = "You need the new version for this. Please update app ...";
System.out.println(s.replace(". ", ".\\n").replace(" ...", "..."));

(Also note that I've replaced ".\\\\n" with ".\\n" here, which produces the desired output.)

Upvotes: 1

Evgeniy Dorofeev
Evgeniy Dorofeev

Reputation: 135992

try as 

    System.out.println(s.replace(". ", ".\n").replace(" ...", "..."));

this gives

You need the new version for this.
Please update app...

Upvotes: 0

jlordo
jlordo

Reputation: 37813

. is a special regex character and will match anything. You need to escape it like this: \\.

So to match three dots you must use following regex: "\\.\\.\\."

what you want is

s.replaceAll("\\. ", ".\n").replaceAll(" \\.\\.\\.", "...")

Upvotes: 1

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