Is there a way to remove characters from a string? Java - java

I am having trouble removing letters from a string. String ALPHABET = "abcdefghjklmnopqrstuvwxyz"; User puts in a string. "klmn". How would i remove klmn from the alphabet? Is there a way? Other then putting it into an array?
This is what i started with. This only removes the last letter in the string. Whats my problem here.
for(int i = 0; i < message.length(); i++){
for(int j = 0; j < ALPHABET.length(); j++){
letter = message.charAt(i);
if(ALPHABET.charAt(j) == message.charAt(i)){
newALPHABET = ALPHABET.replace(letter, ' ');
}
}
}

Don't know what you want to do but you can use String#replace
String alphabet = "abcdefghjklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
alphabet = alphabet.replace("klmn","");

Write a method to delete it.. the logic here is replace the char you want to delete with the next char.. and in place of second one keep the third char and so on..
if you want to delete a large length of String..
then use the method Replace..

You can do that with regular expressions. Try the next:
static String ALPHABET = "abcdefghjklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
public static void main(String[] args) {
String input = JOptionPane.showInputDialog("Letters: ");
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[" + Pattern.quote(input) +"]");
Matcher m = p.matcher(ALPHABET);
String result = m.replaceAll("");
System.out.println(result);
}

If you simply wanted to replace a character or simple substring, then String.replace is the solution.
If you wanted to replace matches a regex, then String.replaceAll is the the solution.
The reason your code is not working is because there are a couple of bugs in it:
You appear to be under the impression that String.replace(char, char) replaces a single character instance. In fact, it replaces all instance of the first character in the String.
Each loop iteration creates a new String and assigns it to newALPHABET. But then you start again with ALPHABET on the next iteration.
If the aim is to produce an "alphabet" that excludes the letters in message, then the correct solution is something like this:
for (int i = 0; i < message.length(); i++) {
ALPHABET = ALPHABET.replace(message.charAt(i), ' ');
}
... except that you should NOT use ALPHABET as the name of a variable. It should be alphabet!!!

Related

String Replacement Error: id.replace(ch, "") not working

I am trying to replace characters in a string
for (String word : stringArray){
int k = 33;
char d ="";
while (k < 64){
char c = k;
word = word.replace(c, ""); // THIS LINE GIVES AN ERROR
k++;
}
}
I am trying to get rid of all the non-letter characters between ASCII id 32 (!) and ASCII id 64 (#), inclusive. I am using stringid.replace(char, char) as suggested here.
However, "" in the second argument of replace is being treated as a string in Eclipse, which is giving an error as "type mismatch" (since replace expects arguments which are both characters).
I have tried '' instead of "" but that doesn't seem to fix the problem. What should I do? Thanks in advance.
EDIT: changed word.replace(c, ""); to word = word.replace(c,""); . Thanks to commenter for pointing this out. However, the problem still occurs.
You have to change quite a bit of your code for this to work:
for (int i = 0; i < stringArray.length; i++) {
int k = 33;
while (k < 64){
stringArray[i] = stringArray[i].replace("" + k, "");
k++;
}
}
The key points are:
Strings are immutable, so if you modify them, you have to reassign them
If you modify an iteration variable in a for loop, the original value in the array won't be changed, you also have to reassign it inside the array
There's no "empty char", so the replacement must be between strings
Why don't you put all the characters that you want to replace in a separate string and use regex to replace them all from your string?
String charsToBeReplaced = "[!\"#$%&'()*+,-.\\/0123456789:;<=>?#]"; //your ASCII 33 to 64 characters... notice that forward slash and double quotes is escaped here
for (int i=0; i<stringArray.length; i++){
stringArray[i] = stringArray[i].replaceAll(charsToBeReplaced, "");
}
DEMO
Just to present another answer using regular expressions:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[\\x21-\\x40]");
for (int i=0; i<stringArray.length; i++){
stringArray[i] = p.matcher(stringArray[i]).replaceAll("");
}
This is probably more efficient that Raman Sahasi's answer as we only have to compile the pattern once.

How to preserve the punctuation when converting words to Pig Latin?

I've been working on a Java program to convert English words to Pig Latin. I've done all the basic rules such as appending -ay, -way, etc., and special cases like question -> estionquay, rhyme -> ymerhay, and I also dealt with capitalization (Thomas -> Omasthay). However, I have one problem that I can't seem to solve: I need to preserve before-and-after punctuation. For example, What? -> Atwhay? Oh!->Ohway! "hello" -> "ellohay" and "Hello!" -> "Ellohay!" This is not a duplicate by the way, I've checked tons of pig latin questions and I cannot seem to figure out how to do it.
Here is my code so far (I've removed all the punctuation but can't figure out how to put it back in):
public static String scrub(String s)
{
String punct = ".,?!:;\"(){}[]<>";
String temp = "";
String pigged = "";
int index, index1, index2, index3 = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++)
{
if(punct.indexOf(s.charAt(i)) == -1) //if s has no punctuation
{
temp+= s.charAt(i);
}
} //temp equals word without punctuation
pigged = pig(temp); //pig is the piglatin-translator method that I have already written,
//didn't want to put it here because it's almost 200 lines
for(int x = 0; x < s.length(); x++)
{
if(s.indexOf(punct)!= -1)//punctuation exists
{
index = x;
}
}
}
I get that in theory you could search the string for punctuation and that it should be near the beginning or end, so you would have to store the index and replace it after it is "piglatenized", but I keep getting confused about the for loop part. if you do index = x inside the for-loop, you're just replacing index every time the loop runs.
Help would be appreciated greatly! Also, please keep in mind I can't use shortcuts, I can use String methods and such but not things like Collections or ArrayLists (not that you'd need them here), I have to reinvent the wheel, basically. By the way, in case it wasn't clear, I already have the translating-to-piglatin thing down. I only need to preserve the punctuation before and after translating.
If you are allowed to use regular expressions, you can use the following code.
String pigSentence(String sentence) {
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("\\p{L}+").matcher(sentence);
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
while (m.find()) {
m.appendReplacement(pig(m.group()));
}
m.appendTail();
return sb.toString();
}
In plain English, the above code is:
for each word in the sentence:
replace it with pig(word)
But if regular expressions are forbidden, you can try this:
String pigSentence(String sentence) {
char[] chars = sentence.toCharArray();
int i = 0, len = chars.length;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
while (i < len) {
while (i < len && !Character.isLetter(chars[i]))
sb.append(chars[i++]);
int wordStart = i;
while (i < len && Character.isLetter(chars[i]))
i++;
int wordEnd = i;
if (wordStart != wordEnd) {
String word = sentence.substring(wordStart, wordEnd - wordStart);
sb.append(pig(word));
}
}
return sb.toString();
}
What you need to do is: remove punctuation if it exists, convert to pig latin, add punctuation back.
Assuming punctuation is always and the end of the string, You can check for punctuation with the following:
String punctuation = "";
for (int i = str.length() - 1; i > 0; i--) {
if (!Character.isLetter(str.charAt(i))) {
punctuation = str.charAt(i) + punctuation;
} else {
break; // Found all punctuation
}
}
str = str.substring(0, str.length() - punctuation.length()); // Remove punctuation
// Convert str to pig latin
// Append punctuation to str
I'd find it troublesome to handle punctuation separate from the translation. For punctuation at the very beginning or very end, you can save them and tag them back on after translating.
But if you remove the punctuations from the middle of the word, it will be rather difficult to replace them back to their correct location. Their indices change from the original word to the pigged word, and by a variable amount. (For some a random example, consider "Hel'lo" and "Quest'ion". The apostrophe shifts left by either 1 or 2, and you won't know which.)
How does your translation method handle punctuation? Do you really need to remove all punctuation before passing it to the translator? I'd suggest having your pigging method handle at least the punctuation in the middle of the word.

Formatting String Array efficiently in Java

I was working on some string formatting, and I was curious if I was doing it the most efficient way.
Assume I have a String Array:
String ArrayOne[] = {"/test/" , "/this/is/test" , "/that/is/" "/random/words" }
I want the result Array to be
String resultArray[] = {"test", "this_is_test" , "that_is" , "random_words" }
It's quite messy and brute-force-like.
for(char c : ArrayOne[i].toCharArray()) {
if(c == '/'){
occurances[i]++;
}
}
First I count the number of "/" in each String like above and then using these counts, I find the indexOf("/") for each string and add "_" accordingly.
As you can see though, it gets very messy.
Is there a more efficient way to do this besides the brute-force way I'm doing?
Thanks!
You could use replaceAll and replace, as follows:
String resultArray[] = new String[ArrayOne.length];
for (int i = 0; i < ArrayOne.length; ++i) {
resultArray[i] = ArrayOne[i].replaceAll("^/|/$", "").replace('/', '_');
}
The replaceAll method searches the string for a match to the regex given in the first argument, and replaces each match with the text in the second argument.
Here, we use it first to remove leading and trailing slashes. We search for slashes at the start of the string (^/) or the end of the string (/$), and replace them with nothing.
Then, we replace all remaining slashes with underscores using replace.

java regex replace any double letter in word with single

I've been searching for hours but can't find an answer, I apologize if this has been answered before.
I'm trying to check each word in a message for any double letters and remove the extra letter, words like wall or doll for example would become wal or dol. the purpose is for a fake language translation for a game, so far I've gottan as far as identifying the double letters but don't know how to replace them.
here's my code so far:
public String[] removeDouble(String[] words){
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(\\w)\\1+");
for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++){
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(words[i]);
if (matcher.find()){
words[i].replaceAll("what to replace with?");
}
}
return words;
}
You can do the whole replacement operation in one statement if you use back references:
for (int i = 0; i < words.length; i++)
words[i] = words[i].replaceAll("(.)\\1", "$1");
Note that you must assign the value returned from string methods that (appear to) change strings, because they return new strings rather than mutate the string.
String.replaceAll does not modify the string in-place. (Java String is immutable) You need assign the returned value back.
And the String.replaceAll accepts two parameters.
Replace following line:
words[i].replaceAll("what to replace with?");
with:
words[i] = "what to replace with?";

Removing duplicate same characters in a row

I am trying to create a method which will either remove all duplicates from a string or only keep the same 2 characters in a row based on a parameter.
For example:
helllllllo -> helo
or
helllllllo -> hello - This keeps double letters
Currently I remove duplicates by doing:
private String removeDuplicates(String word) {
StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
for (int i = 0; i < word.length(); i++) {
char letter = word.charAt(i);
if (buffer.length() == 0 && letter != buffer.charAt(buffer.length() - 1)) {
buffer.append(letter);
}
}
return buffer.toString();
}
If I want to keep double letters I was thinking of having a method like private String removeDuplicates(String word, boolean doubleLetter)
When doubleLetter is true it will return hello not helo
I'm not sure of the most efficient way to do this without duplicating a lot of code.
why not just use a regex?
public class RemoveDuplicates {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(new RemoveDuplicates().result("hellllo", false)); //helo
System.out.println(new RemoveDuplicates().result("hellllo", true)); //hello
}
public String result(String input, boolean doubleLetter){
String pattern = null;
if(doubleLetter) pattern = "(.)(?=\\1{2})";
else pattern = "(.)(?=\\1)";
return input.replaceAll(pattern, "");
}
}
(.) --> matches any character and puts in group 1.
?= --> this is called a positive lookahead.
?=\\1 --> positive lookahead for the first group
So overall, this regex looks for any character that is followed (positive lookahead) by itself. For example aa or bb, etc. It is important to note that only the first character is part of the match actually, so in the word 'hello', only the first l is matched (the part (?=\1) is NOT PART of the match). So the first l is replaced by an empty String and we are left with helo, which does not match the regex
The second pattern is the same thing, but this time we look ahead for TWO occurrences of the first group, for example helllo. On the other hand 'hello' will not be matched.
Look here for a lot more: Regex
P.S. Fill free to accept the answer if it helped.
try
String s = "helllllllo";
System.out.println(s.replaceAll("(\\w)\\1+", "$1"));
output
helo
Taking this previous SO example as a starting point, I came up with this:
String str1= "Heelllllllllllooooooooooo";
String removedRepeated = str1.replaceAll("(\\w)\\1+", "$1");
System.out.println(removedRepeated);
String keepDouble = str1.replaceAll("(\\w)\\1{2,}", "$1");
System.out.println(keepDouble);
It yields:
Helo
Heelo
What it does:
(\\w)\\1+ will match any letter and place it in a regex capture group. This group is later accessed through the \\1+. Meaning that it will match one or more repetitions of the previous letter.
(\\w)\\1{2,} is the same as above the only difference being that it looks after only characters which are repeated more than 2 times. This leaves the double characters untouched.
EDIT:
Re-read the question and it seems that you want to replace multiple characters by doubles. To do that, simply use this line:
String keepDouble = str1.replaceAll("(\\w)\\1+", "$1$1");
Try this, this will be most efficient way[Edited after comment]:
public static String removeDuplicates(String str) {
int checker = 0;
StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
for (int i = 0; i < str.length(); ++i) {
int val = str.charAt(i) - 'a';
if ((checker & (1 << val)) == 0)
buffer.append(str.charAt(i));
checker |= (1 << val);
}
return buffer.toString();
}
I am using bits to identify uniqueness.
EDIT:
Whole logic is that if a character has been parsed then its corrresponding bit is set and next time when that character comes up then it will not be added in String Buffer the corresponding bit is already set.

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