CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregex
hellzone
hellzone

Reputation: 5246

How to remove specific repeated characters from text?

I have a String like

"this is line 1\n\n\nthis is line 2\n\n\nthis is line 3\t\t\tthis is line 3 also"

What I want to do is remove repeated specific characters like "\n", "\t" from this text.

"this is line 1\nthis is line 2\nthis is line 3\tthis is line 3 also"

I tried some regular expressions but didn't work for me.

text = text.replace("/[^\\w\\s]|(.)\\1/gi", "");

Is there any regex for this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 118

Answers (2)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626845

If you need to only remove sepcific whitespace chars, \s won't help as it will overmatch, i.e. it will also match spaces, hard spaces, etc.

You may use a character class with the chars, wrap them with a capturing group and use a backreference to the value captured. And replace with the backreference to the Group 1 value:

.replaceAll("([\n\t])\\1+", "$1")

See the regex demo.

Details

  • ([\n\t]) - Group 1 (referred to with \1 from the pattern and $1 from the replacement pattern): a character class matching either a newline or tab symbols
  • \1+ - one or more repetitions of the value in Group 1.

Upvotes: 3

nobeh
nobeh

Reputation: 10039

I would use Guava's CharMatcher:

CharMatcher.javaIsoControl().removeFrom(myString)

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions