We Keep Coding

How to eliminate the special character ^\^# from String in Java

My application is reading a file which contains following data:
MENS HEALTH^\^# P
while actual text should be
MENS HEALTH P
I have already replaced the '\u0000' but still "^\" is still remaining in the string. I am not sure what is code for this characters, so I can replace it.
When I open the file in intelliJ editor it's displayed as FS symbol.
Please suggest how I can eliminate this.
Thanks,

Rather than worry about what characters the junk consists of, remove everything that isn't what you want to keep:
str = str.replaceAll("[^\\w ]+", "");
This deletes any characters that are not word characters or spaces.

You can use a regular expression with String.replaceAll() to replace these characters.
Note that backslash has a special meaning and need to be escaped (with a backslash).
"my\\^#String".replaceAll("[\\\\^#]", "");
Online Demo

Matching The Arabic punctuation marks in Java

I want to edit on REGEX_PATTERN2 in this code to work with matches()method of The Arabic punctuation marks
String REGEX_PATTERN = "[\\.|,|:|;|!|_|\\?]+";
String s1 = "My life :is happy, stable";
String[] result = s1.split(REGEX_PATTERN);
for (String myString : result) {
System.out.println(myString);
}
String REGEX_PATTERN2 = "[\\.|,|:|;|!|_|،|؛|؟\\?]+";
String s2 = " حياتي ؛ سعيدة، مستقر";
String[] result2 = s2.split(REGEX_PATTERN2);
for (String myString : result2) {
System.out.println(myString);
}
The output I wanted
My life
is happy
stable
حياتي
سعيدة
مستقر
How I can edit to this code and use the matches() instead of split() method to get the same output with Arabic punctuation marks

There are a few problems here. First this example:
if (word.matches("[\\.|,|:|;|!|\\?]+"))
That is mildly1 incorrect for the following reason:
A . does not need to be escaped in a character class.
A | does not mean alternation in a character class.
A ? does not need to be escaped in a character class.
(For more details, read the javadoc or a tutorial on Java regexes.)
So you can rewrite the above as:
if (word.matches("[.,:;!?]+"))
... assuming that you don't want to classify the pipe character as punctuation.
Now this:
if (word.matches("[\.|,|:|;|!|،|؛|..|...|؟|\?]+"))
You have same problems as above. In addition, you seem to have used the two and three full-stop / period characters instead of (presumably) some Unicode character. I suspect they might be a \ufbb7 or u061e or \u06db, but I'm no linguist. (Certainly 2 or 3 full-stops is incorrect.)
So what are the punctuation characters in Arabic?
To be honest, I think that the answer depends on what source you look at, but Wikipedia states:
Only the Arabic question mark ⟨؟⟩ and the Arabic comma ⟨،⟩ are used in regular Arabic script typing and the comma is often substituted for the Latin script comma (,).
1 - By mildly incorrect, I mean that the mistakes in this example are mostly harmless. However, your inclusion of (multiple instances of) the | character n the class does mean that you will incorrectly classify a "pipe" as punctuation.

[] denotes a regex character class, which means it only matches single characters. ... is 3 characters, so it cannot be used in a character class.
In a character class, you don't separate characters with |, and you don't need to escape . and ?.
You probably meant this, which is a list of alternate character sequences:
"(?:\\.|,|:|;|!|\\?|،|؛|؟|\\.\\.|\\.\\.\\.)+"
You might get better performance if you do use a character class where you can:
"(?:\\.{1,3}|[,:;!?،؛؟])+"
Of course, with the + at the end, matching 1-3 periods in each iteration is rather redundant, so this will do:
"[.,:;!?،؛؟]+"

Here's a different approach, that uses Unicode properties instead of specific characters (In case you care about more Arabic marks than just the question mark and comma mentioned in another answer):
"(?=^[\\p{InArabic}.,:;!?]+$)^\\p{IsPunctuation}+$"
It matches an entire string of characters that have a punctuation category, that also are either in the Arabic block or are one of the other punctuation characters you listed in your efforts.
It'll match strings like "؟،" or "؟،:", but not "؟،ؠ" or "؟،a".

Using regex to only match those Strings which use escape character correctly (according to Java syntax)?

take these strings for example:
"hello world\n" (correct - regex should match this)
"I'm happy \ here" (this is incorrect as the escape character is not
used correctly - regex should not match this one)
I've tried searching on google but didn't find anything helpful.
I want this one to be used in a parser which only parses string literals from a java code file.
Here is the the regex I used:
"\\\"(\\[tbnrf\'\"\\])*[a-zA-Z0-9\\`\\~\\!\\#\\#\\$\\%\\^\\&\\*\\(\\)\\_\\-\\+\\=\\|\\{\\[\\}\\]\\;\\:\\'\\/\\?\\>\\.\\<\\,]\\\""
what am I doing wrong?

I guess you gave us the regex in Java String literal form, like
String regex = \"(\[tbnrf'"\])*[a-zA-Z0-9\`\~\!\#\#\$\%\^\&\*\(\)\_\-\+\=\|\{\[\}\]\;\:\'\/\?\>\.\<\,]\";
Unpacking that from Java's String escaping syntax gives the raw regex:
\"(\[tbnrf'"\])*[a-zA-Z0-9\`\~\!\#\#\$\%\^\&\*\(\)\_\-\+\=\|\{\[\}\]\;\:\'\/\?\>\.\<\,]\"
That consists of:
\" matching a double-quote character (Java String literal begins here). Escaping the double quotes with backslash isn't necessary: " on its own is ok as well.
(\[tbnrf'"\])*: a group, repeated 0...n times. I guess you want that to match against the various Java backslash escapes, but that should read (\\[tbnrf'"\\])* with a double backslash in front and inside the character class. And maybe you want to cover the Java octal escapes as well (see the language specification), giving (\\[tbnrf01234567'"\\])*
[a-zA-Z0-9\``\~\!\#\#\$\%\^\&\*\(\)\_\-\+\=\|\{\[\}\]\;\:\'\/\?\>\.\<\,]: a character class matching one character from a selected list of alphabetic and punctuation characters. I'd replace that with [^"\\], meaning anything but double quote or backslash.
\" matching a double-quote character (string literal ends here). Once again, no need to escape the double quote.
Besides the individual elements, the overall structure of the regex probably isn't what you want: You allow only strings beginning with any number of backslash escapes, followed by exactly one non-escape character, and this enclosed in a pair of double quotes.
The overall structure should instead be "(backslash_escape|simple_character)*"
So, the complete regex would be:
"(\\[tbnrf01234567'"\\]|[^"\\])*"
or, expressed in a Java literal:
String regex = "\"(\\\\[tbnrf01234567'\"\\\\]|[^\"\\\\])*\"";
And, although this is shorter than your original attempt, I'd still not call it readable and opt for a different implementation, not using regular expressions.
P.S. Although I did some testing with my regex, I'm not at all sure that it covers all relevant cases correctly.
P.P.S. There are the \uxxxx escapes, not yet covered by the regex.

Java - Unknown characters passing as [a-zA-z0-9]*?

I'm no expert in regex but I need to parse some input I have no control over, and make sure I filter away any strings that don't have A-z and/or 0-9.
When I run this,
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$"); //fixed typo
if(!p.matcher(gottenData).matches())
System.out.println(someData); //someData contains gottenData
certain spaces + an unknown symbol somehow slip through the filter (gottenData is the red rectangle):
In case you're wondering, it DOES also display Text, it's not all like that.
For now, I don't mind the [?] as long as it also contains some string along with it.
Please help.
[EDIT] as far as I can tell from the (very large) input, the [?]'s are either white spaces either nothing at all; maybe there's some sort of encoding issue, also perhaps something to do with #text nodes (input is xml)

The * quantifier matches "zero or more", which means it will match a string that does not contain any of the characters in your class. Try the + quantifier, which means "One or more": ^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$ will match strings made up of alphanumeric characters only. ^.*[a-zA-Z0-9]+.*$ will match any string containing one or more alphanumeric characters, although the leading .* will make it much slower. If you use Matcher.lookingAt() instead of Matcher.matches, it will not require a full string match and you can use the regex [a-zA-Z0-9]+.

You have an error in your regex: instead of [a-zA-z0-9]* it should be [a-zA-Z0-9]*.
You don't need ^ and $ around the regex.
Matcher.matches() always matches the complete string.
String gottenData = "a ";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[a-zA-z0-9]*");
if (!p.matcher(gottenData).matches())
System.out.println("doesn't match.");
this prints "doesn't match."

The correct answer is a combination of the above answers. First I imagine your intended character match is [a-zA-Z0-9]. Note that A-z isn't as bad as you might think it include all characters in the ASCII range between A and z, which is the letters plus a few extra (specifically [,\,],^,_,`).
A second potential problem as Martin mentioned is you may need to put in the start and end qualifiers, if you want the string to only consists of letters and numbers.
Finally you use the * operator which means 0 or more, therefore you can match 0 characters and matches will return true, so effectively your pattern will match any input. What you need is the + quantifier. So I will submit the pattern you are most likely looking for is:
^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$

You have to change the regexp to "^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$" to ensure that you are matching the entire string

Looks like it should be "a-zA-Z0-9", not "a-zA-z0-9", try correcting that...

Did anyone consider adding space to the regex [a-zA-Z0-9 ]*. this should match any normal text with chars, number and spaces. If you want quotes and other special chars add them to the regex too.
You can quickly test your regex at http://www.regexplanet.com/simple/

You can check input value is contained string and numbers? by using regex ^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$
if your value just contained numberString than its show match i.e, riz99, riz99z
else it will show not match i.e, 99z., riz99.z, riz99.9
Example code:
if(e.target.value.match('^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$')){
console.log('match')
}
else{
console.log('not match')
}
}
online working example

How to replace a special character with single slash

I have a question about strings in Java. Let's say, I have a string like so:
String str = "The . startup trace ?state is info?";
As the string contains the special character like "?" I need the string to be replaced with "\?" as per my requirement. How do I replace special characters with "\"? I tried the following way.
str.replace("?","\?");
But it gives a compilation error. Then I tried the following:
str.replace("?","\\?");
When I do this it replaces the special characters with "\\". But when I print the string, it prints with single slash. I thought it is taking single slash only but when I debugged I found that the variable is taking "\\".
Can anyone suggest how to replace the special characters with single slash ("\")?

On escape sequences
A declaration like:
String s = "\\";
defines a string containing a single backslash. That is, s.length() == 1.
This is because \ is a Java escape character for String and char literals. Here are some other examples:
"\n" is a String of length 1 containing the newline character
"\t" is a String of length 1 containing the tab character
"\"" is a String of length 1 containing the double quote character
"\/" contains an invalid escape sequence, and therefore is not a valid String literal
it causes compilation error
Naturally you can combine escape sequences with normal unescaped characters in a String literal:
System.out.println("\"Hey\\\nHow\tare you?");
The above prints (tab spacing may vary):
"Hey\
How are you?
References
JLS 3.10.6 Escape Sequences for Character and String Literals
See also
Is the char literal '\"' the same as '"' ?(backslash-doublequote vs only-doublequote)
Back to the problem
Your problem definition is very vague, but the following snippet works as it should:
System.out.println("How are you? Really??? Awesome!".replace("?", "\\?"));
The above snippet replaces ? with \?, and thus prints:
How are you\? Really\?\?\? Awesome!
If instead you want to replace a char with another char, then there's also an overload for that:
System.out.println("How are you? Really??? Awesome!".replace('?', '\\'));
The above snippet replaces ? with \, and thus prints:
How are you\ Really\\\ Awesome!
String API links
replace(CharSequence target, CharSequence replacement)
Replaces each substring of this string that matches the literal target sequence with the specified literal replacement sequence.
replace(char oldChar, char newChar)
Returns a new string resulting from replacing all occurrences of oldChar in this string with newChar.
On how regex complicates things
If you're using replaceAll or any other regex-based methods, then things becomes somewhat more complicated. It can be greatly simplified if you understand some basic rules.
Regex patterns in Java is given as String values
Metacharacters (such as ? and .) have special meanings, and may need to be escaped by preceding with a backslash to be matched literally
The backslash is also a special character in replacement String values
The above factors can lead to the need for numerous backslashes in patterns and replacement strings in a Java source code.
It doesn't look like you need regex for this problem, but here's a simple example to show what it can do:
System.out.println(
"Who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!!!"
.replaceAll("[?!]+", "<$0>")
);
The above prints:
Who you gonna call<?> GHOSTBUSTERS<!!!>
The pattern [?!]+ matches one-or-more (+) of any characters in the character class [...] definition (which contains a ? and ! in this case). The replacement string <$0> essentially puts the entire match $0 within angled brackets.
Related questions
Having trouble with Splitting text. - discusses common mistakes like split(".") and split("|")
Regular expressions references
regular-expressions.info
Character class and Repetition with Star and Plus
java.util.regex.Pattern and Matcher

In case you want to replace ? with \?, there are 2 possibilities: replace and replaceAll (for regular expressions):
str.replace("?", "\\?")
str.replaceAll("\\?","\\\\?");
The result is "The . startup trace \?state is info\?"
If you want to replace ? with \, just remove the ? character from the second argument.

But when I print the string, it prints
with single slash.
Good. That's exactly what you want, isn't it?
There are two simple rules:
A backslash inside a String literal has to be specified as two to satisfy the compiler, i.e. "\". Otherwise it is taken as a special-character escape.
A backslash in a regular expresion has to be specified as two to satisfy regex, otherwise it is taken as a regex escape. Because of (1) this means you have to write 2x2=4 of them:"\\\\" (and because of the forum software I actually had to write 8!).

String str="\\";
str=str.replace(str,"\\\\");
System.out.println("New String="+str);
Out put:- New String=\
In java "\\" treat as "\". So, the above code replace a "\" single slash into "\\".