CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javastringformattingformatconcatenation
Amani Swann
Amani Swann

Reputation: 11

Formatting String.format Data

I have an application which gathers wifi and cellular data usage and sends it as a string of data via SMS - however I need a bit of help modifying the string it sends into the correct format

The way it appears now:

USI;1;3056090866;06/16/58/06/24/13;CN25.48,WN86.957USI;CN34.931,WN16.656

The way I would like it to send in the following manner: (without the second USI in it)

USI;1;3056090866;06/16/58/06/24/13;CN25.48,WN86.957;CN34.931,WN16.656

How can this be accomplished? (I simply want to remove the 2nd occurance of the word USI but I'm not sure how you can programatically remove data using String.format)

CODE SNIPPET:

String info = String.format("USI%sCN%s,WN%s", tag + status + tag + mdn +tag + DToDevice + tag, mobileStr, totalStr + settings.getString("last_month", "0"));

Upvotes: 0

Views: 163

Answers (3)

Bernhard Barker
Bernhard Barker

Reputation: 55619

To replace the first USI that isn't at the start of the string:

String info = String.format(...);
info = info.replaceFirst("(?<=.)USI","");

To replace the second USI:

String info = String.format(...);
info = info.replaceFirst("(?<=USI.{0,10000})USI","");

(or another solution that may also suit your needs)

Test.

You can similarly use replaceAll to replace all occurrences.

The above makes use of regular expressions.

(?<=...) means the characters before must match the given pattern, which is, in the first case, anything / a wild-card (.). In the second case, we look backwards until we find a USI. The .{0,10000} means 0-10000 wild-cards (.*, which means zero-or-more wild-cards, doesn't work because look-behind needs a max length).

See this for more on Java regex.

Upvotes: 1

cmenke
cmenke

Reputation: 164

You could, as a workaround, find the position of the latter USI with String.lastIndexOf and then work with String.substring using that position to split it into two parts without the second USI.

Upvotes: 0

Robert Tupelo-Schneck
Robert Tupelo-Schneck

Reputation: 10543

info.replace("USI","") will remove every instance of "USI". Maybe it would suffice to do "USI" + info.replace("USI","").

Upvotes: 1

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