CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregex
April_Nara
April_Nara

Reputation: 1046

Pattern matching symbols to have alpha inputs

I'm trying to strip the symbols from my Strings and this isn't working. It's like Pattern Matcher seems broke. I know I'm just missing something. Thanks.

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[,\\.;:{}/\\[\\]<>?`~!@#$%^&*()_+=]");
Matcher m = p.matcher("April's");
Matcher m1 = p.matcher("Place to go!");
setName(m.replaceAll(""));
setDescription(m1.replaceAll(""));

I'm expected to see this:

Input- "Sarah's Scope"

Output- "Sarahs Scope"

What I'm currently seeing is:

Input- "Sarah's Scope"

Output- "Sarah's Scope"

Upvotes: 0

Views: 82

Answers (3)

Manolo
Manolo

Reputation: 26370

Use this pattern instead:

"[\\'\\\",\\.;:{}/\\[\\]<>\\?`~!@#\\$%\\^&\\*\\(\\)_\\+=]"

or thi:

"[\\'\\\",\\.;:{}/\\[\\]<>\\?\\`~!@#\\$%\\^&\\*\\(\\)_\\+=]"

But maybe it would be easier to do with:

"[^[a-z][A-Z][0-9]]"

or

"[^a-zA-Z0-9]"

since you are searching any symbol it would be any character except letters and numbers.

Upvotes: 1

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785098

I believe you're looking for \\p{Punct} regex property here to weed out all punctuation characters:

Consider this code:

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\p{Punct}+");
Matcher m = p.matcher("Sarah's Scope");
System.out.println(m.replaceAll(""));
//> Sarahs Scope

Upvotes: 0

Justin
Justin

Reputation: 25297

It looks like you are trying to strip all characters that aren't letters or whitespace. If that is the case, then this will work:

"[^\\sA-Za-z]"

Or, if you want to include numbers:

"[^\\sA-Za-z0-9]"

Or, if you know specifically what you want to keep: "[^ followed by what you want to keep, then followed by ]".

If you are just trying to remove all characters of a String that don't match the pattern, then it is easier to use String.replaceAll().

For more on regex, see regex tutorial.

Upvotes: 0

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