Develop Reference

Replace all characters between two delimiters using regex

I'm trying to replace all characters between two delimiters with another character using regex. The replacement should have the same length as the removed string.
String string1 = "any prefix [tag=foo]bar[/tag] any suffix";
String string2 = "any prefix [tag=foo]longerbar[/tag] any suffix";
String output1 = string1.replaceAll(???, "*");
String output2 = string2.replaceAll(???, "*");
The expected outputs would be:
output1: "any prefix [tag=foo]***[/tag] any suffix"
output2: "any prefix [tag=foo]*********[/tag] any suffix"
I've tried "\\\\\[tag=.\*?](.\*?)\\\\[/tag]" but this replaces the whole sequence with a single "\*".
I think that "(.\*?)" is the problem here because it captures everything at once.
How would I write something that replaces every character separately?

you can use the regex
\w(?=\w*?\[)
which would match all characters before a "[\"
see the regex demo, online compiler demo

You can capture the chars inside, one by one and replace them by * :
public static String replaceByStar(String str) {
String pattern = "(.*\\[tag=.*\\].*)\\w(.*\\[\\/tag\\].*)";
while (str.matches(pattern)) {
str = str.replaceAll(pattern, "$1*$2");
}
return str;
}
Use like this it will print your tx2 expected outputs :
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(replaceByStar("any prefix [tag=foo]bar[/tag] any suffix"));
System.out.println(replaceByStar("any prefix [tag=foo]loooongerbar[/tag] any suffix"));
}
So the pattern "(.*\\[tag=.*\\].*)\\w(.*\\[\\/tag\\].*)" :
(.*\\[tag=.*\\].*) capture the beginning, with eventually some char in the middle
\\w is for the char you want to replace
(.*\\[\\/tag\\].*) capture the end, with eventually some char in the middle
The substitution $1*$2:
The pattern is (text$1)oneChar(text$2) and it will replace by (text$1)*(text$2)

splitting string and keep characters (regex pattern)

I would like to split a String and despair on the regex pattern.
I need to split a string like this: Hi I want "to split" this (String) to a String array like this:
String [] array = {"Hi", "I", "want", """, "to", "split", """, "this", "(", "string", ")"};
This is what I have tried, but it deletes the delimiter.
public static void main(String[] args) {
String string = "Hi \"why should\" (this work)";
String[] array;
array = string.split("\\s"
+ "|\\s(?=\")"
+ "|\\w(?=\")"
+ "|\"(?=\\w)"
+ "|\\s(?=\\()"
+ "|\\w(?=\\))"
+ "|\\((?=\\w)");
for (String str : array) {
System.out.println(str);
}
}
Result:
Hi
why
shoul
"
this
wor
)

You can match the tokens with the regex \w+|[\w\s], assuming that you want the punctuation characters to end up in different tokens:
String input = "Hi I want \"to split\" this (String).";
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("\\w+|[^\\w\\s]").matcher(input);
List<String> out = new ArrayList<>();
while (matcher.find()) {
out.add(matcher.group());
}
The output ArrayList contains:
[Hi, I, want, ", to, split, ", this, (, String, ), .]
You might want to use (?U) flag to make the \w and \s follows the Unicode definition of word and whitespace character. By default, \w and \s only recognizes word and whitespace characters in ASCII range.
For the sake of completeness, here is the solution in split(), which works on Java 8 and above. There will be an extra empty string at the beginning in Java 7.
String tokens[] = input.split("\\s+|(?<![\\w\\s])(?=\\w)|(?<=\\w)(?![\\w\\s])|(?<=[^\\w\\s])(?=[^\\w\\s])");
The regex is rather complex, since the empty string splits between punctuation character and word character need to avoid the cases already split by \s+.
Since the regex in the split solution is quite a mess, please use the match solution instead.

What language are you trying to write this in?
You could write regex groups something like: (.+)(\s)
This would match any quantity of characters followed by a space

Why the string does not split?

While trying to split a string xyz213123kop234430099kpf4532 into tokens :
xyz213123
kop234430099
kpf4532
I wrote the following code
String s = "xyz213123kop234430099kpf4532";
String regex = "/^[a-zA-z]+[0-9]+$/";
String tokens[] = s.split(regex);
for(String t : tokens) {
System.out.println(t);
}
but instead of tokens, I get the whole string as one output. What is wrong with the regular expression I used ?

You can do that:
String s = "xyz213123kop234430099kpf4532";
String[] result = s.split("(?<=[0-9])(?=[a-z])");
The idea is to use zero width assertions to find the place where to cut the string, then I use a lookbehind (preceded by a digit [0-9]) and a lookahead (followed by a letter [a-z]).
These lookarounds are just checks and match nothing, thus the delimiter of the split is an empty string and no characters are removed from the result.

You could split on this matching between a number and not-a-number.
String s = "xyz213123kop234430099kpf4532";
String[] parts = s.split("(?<![^\\d])(?=\\D)");
for (String p : parts) {
System.out.println(p);
}
Output
xyz213123
kop234430099
kpf4532

There's nothing in your string that matches the regular expression, because your expression starts with ^ (beginning of string) and ends with $ (end of string). So it would either match the whole string, or nothing at all. But because it doesn't match the string, it is not found when you split the string into tokens. That's why you get just one big token.

You don't want to use split for that. The argument to split is the delimiter between tokens. You don't have that. Instead, you have a pattern that repeats and you want each match to the pattern. Try this instead:
String s = "xyz213123kop234430099kpf4532";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("([a-zA-z]+[0-9]+)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
while (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group());
}
Output:
xyz213123
kop234430099
kpf4532
(I don't know by what logic you would have the second token be "3kop234430099" as in your posted question. I assume that the leading "3" is a typo.)

Regular Expression - inserting space after comma only if succeeded by a letter or number

In Java I want to insert a space after a String but only if the character after the comma is succeeded by a digit or letter. I am hoping to use the replaceAll method which uses regular expressions as a parameter. So far I have the following:
String s1="428.0,chf";
s1 = s1.replaceAll(",(\\d|\\w)",", ");
This code does successfully distinguish between the String above and one where there is already a space after the comma. My problem is that I can't figure out how to write the expression so that the space is inserted. The code above will replace the c in the String shown above with a space. This is not what I want.
s1 should look like this after executing the replaceAll: "428.0 chf"

s1.replaceAll(",(?=[\da-zA-Z])"," ");
(?=[\da-zA-Z]) is a positive lookahead which would look for a digit or a word after ,.This lookahead would not be replaced since it is never included in the result.It's just a check
NOTE
\w includes digit,alphabets and a _.So no need of \d.
A better way to represent it would be [\da-zA-Z] instead of \w since \w also includes _ which you do not need 2 match

Try this, and note that $1 refers to your matched grouping:
s1.replaceAll(",(\\d|\\w)"," $1");
Note that String.replaceAll() works in the same way as a Matcher.replaceAll(). From the doc:
The replacement string may contain references to captured subsequences

String s1="428.0,chf";
s1 = s1.replaceAll(",([^_]\\w)"," $1"); //Match alphanumeric except '_' after ','
System.out.println(s1);
Output: -
428.0 chf
Since \w matches digits, words, and an underscore, So, [^_] negates the underscore from \w..
$1 represents the captured group.. You captured c after , here, so replace c with _$1 -> _c.. "_" represent a space..

Try this....
public class Tes {
public static void main(String[] args){
String s1="428.0,chf";
String[] sArr = s1.split(",");
String finalStr = new String();
for(String s : sArr){
finalStr = finalStr +" "+ s;
}
System.out.println(finalStr);
}
}

Java Split not working as expected

I am trying to use a simple split to break up the following string: 00-00000
My expression is: ^([0-9][0-9])(-)([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])
And my usage is:
String s = "00-00000";
String pattern = "^([0-9][0-9])(-)([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])";
String[] parts = s.split(pattern);
If I play around with the Pattern and Matcher classes I can see that my pattern does match and the matcher tells me my groupCount is 7 which is correct. But when I try and split them I have no luck.

String.split does not use capturing groups as its result. It finds whatever matches and uses that as the delimiter. So the resulting String[] are substrings in between what the regex matches. As it is the regex matches the whole string, and with the whole string as a delimiter there is nothing else left so it returns an empty array.
If you want to use regex capturing groups you will have to use Matcher.group(), String.split() will not do.

for your example, you could simply do this:
String s = "00-00000";
String pattern = "-";
String[] parts = s.split(pattern);

I can not be sure, but I think what you are trying to do is to get each matched group into an array.
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(pattern).matcher();
if (matcher.matches()) {
String s[] = new String[matcher.groupCount()) {
for (int i=0;i<matches.groupCount();i++) {
s[i] = matcher.group(i);
}
}
}

From the documentation:
String[] split(String regex) -- Returns: the array of strings computed by splitting this string around matches of the given regular expression
Essentially the regular expression is used to define delimiters in the input string. You can use capturing groups and backreferences in your pattern (e.g. for lookarounds), but ultimately what matters is what and where the pattern matches, because that defines what goes into the returned array.
If you want to split your original string into 7 parts using regular expression, then you can do something like this:
String s = "12-3456";
String[] parts = s.split("(?!^)");
System.out.println(parts.length); // prints "7"
for (String part : parts) {
System.out.println("Part [" + part + "]");
} // prints "[1] [2] [-] [3] [4] [5] [6] "
This splits on zero-length matching assertion (?!^), which is anywhere except before the first character in the string. This prevents the empty string to be the first element in the array, and trailing empty string is already discarded because we use the default limit parameter to split.
Using regular expression to get individual character of a string like this is an overkill, though. If you have only a few characters, then the most concise option is to use foreach on the toCharArray():
for (char ch : "12-3456".toCharArray()) {
System.out.print("[" + ch + "] ");
}
This is not the most efficient option if you have a longer string.
Splitting on -
This may also be what you're looking for:
String s = "12-3456";
String[] parts = s.split("-");
System.out.println(parts.length); // prints "2"
for (String part : parts) {
System.out.print("[" + part + "] ");
} // prints "[12] [3456] "