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Replace multiple capture groups using regexp with java

I have this requirement - for an input string such as the one shown below
8This8 is &reallly& a #test# of %repl%acing% %mul%tiple 9matched9 9pairs
I would like to strip the matched word boundaries (where the matching pair is 8 or & or % etc) and will result in the following
This is really a test of repl%acing %mul%tiple matched 9pairs
This list of characters that is used for the pairs can vary e.g. 8,9,%,# etc and only the words matching the start and end with each type will be stripped of those characters, with the same character embedded in the word remaining where it is.
Using Java I can do a pattern as \\b8([^\\s]*)8\\b and replacement as $1, to capture and replace all occurrences of 8...8, but how do I do this for all the types of pairs?
I can provide a pattern such as \\b8([^\\s]*)8\\b|\\b9([^\\s]*)9\\b .. and so on that will match all types of matching pairs *8,9,..), but how do I specify a 'variable' replacement group -
e.g. if the match is 9...9, the the replacement should be $2.
I can of course run it through multiple of these, each replacing a specific type of pair, but I am wondering if there is a more elegant way.
Or is there a completely different way of approaching this problem?
Thanks.

You could use the below regex and then replace the matched characters by the characters present inside the group index 2.
(?<!\S)(\S)(\S+)\1(?=\s|$)
OR
(?<!\S)(\S)(\S*)\1(?=\s|$)
Java regex would be,
(?<!\\S)(\\S)(\\S+)\\1(?=\\s|$)
DEMO
String s1 = "8This8 is &reallly& a #test# of %repl%acing% %mul%tiple 9matched9 9pairs";
System.out.println(s1.replaceAll("(?<!\\S)(\\S)(\\S+)\\1(?=\\s|$)", "$2"));
Output:
This is reallly a test of repl%acing %mul%tiple matched 9pairs
Explanation:
(?<!\\S) Negative lookbehind, asserts that the match wouldn't be preceded by a non-space character.
(\\S) Captures the first non-space character and stores it into group index 1.
(\\S+) Captures one or more non-space characters.
\\1 Refers to the character inside first captured group.
(?=\\s|$) And the match must be followed by a space or end of the line anchor.
This makes sure that the first character and last character of the string must be the same. If so, then it replaces the whole match by the characters which are present inside the group index 2.
For this specific case, you could modify the above regex as,
String s1 = "8This8 is &reallly& a #test# of %repl%acing% %mul%tiple 9matched9 9pairs";
System.out.println(s1.replaceAll("(?<!\\S)([89&#%])(\\S+)\\1(?=\\s|$)", "$2"));
DEMO

(?<![a-zA-Z])[8&#%9](?=[a-zA-Z])([^\s]*?)(?<=[a-zA-Z])[8&#%9](?![a-zA-Z])
Try this.Replace with $1 or \1.See demo.
https://regex101.com/r/qB0jV1/15
(?<![a-zA-Z])[^a-zA-Z](?=[a-zA-Z])([^\s]*?)(?<=[a-zA-Z])[^a-zA-Z](?![a-zA-Z])
Use this if you have many delimiters.

validate string in java

I have a string with data separated by commas like this:
$d4kjvdf,78953626,10.0,103007,0,132103.8945F,
I tried the following regex but it doesn't match the strings I want:
[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,

The $ at the beginning of your data string is not matching the regex. Change the first character class to [$a-zA-Z0-9]. And a couple of the comma separated values contain a literal dot. [$.a-zA-Z0-9] would cover both cases. Also, it's probably a good idea to anchor the regex at the start and end by adding ^ and $ to the beginning and end of the regex respectively. How about this for the full regex:
^[$.a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[$.a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[$.a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[$.a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[$.a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,[$.a-zA-Z0-9]+\\,$
Update:
You said number of commas is your primary matching criteria. If there should be 6 commas, this would work:
^([^,]+,){6}$
That means: match at least 1 character that is anything but a comma, followed by a comma. And perform the aforementioned match 6 times consecutively. Note: your data must end with a trailing comma as is consistent with your sample data.

Well your regular expression is certainly jarbled - there are clearly characters (like $ and .) that your expression won't match, and you don't need to \\ escape ,s. Lets first describe our requirements, you seem to be saying a valid string is defined as:
A string consisting of 6 commas, with one or more characters before each one
We can represent that with the following pattern:
(?:[^,]+,){6}
This says match one or more non-commas, followed by a comma - [^,]+, - six times - {6}. The (?:...) notation is a non-capturing group, which lets us say match the whole sub-expression six times, without it, the {6} would only apply to the preceding character.
Alternately, we could use normal, capturing groups to let us select each individual section of the matching string:
([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),?
Now we can not only match the string, but extract its contents at the same time, e.g.:
String str = "$d4kjvdf,78953626,10.0,103007,0,132103.8945F,";
Pattern regex = Pattern.compile(
"([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),([^,]+),?");
Matcher m = regex.matcher(str);
if(m.matches()) {
for (int i = 1; i <= m.groupCount(); i++) {
System.out.println(m.group(i));
}
}
This prints:
$d4kjvdf
78953626
10.0
103007
0
132103.8945F

A regex that doesn't match with this character sequence

Here is my Regex, I am trying to search all special characters so that I can escape them.
(\(|\)|\[|\]|\{|\}|\?|\+|\\|\.|\$|\^|\*|\||\!|\&|\-|\#|\#|\%|\_|\"|\:|\<|\>|\/|\;|\'|\`|\~)
My problem here is, I don't want to escape some sepcial characters only when the come in a sequence
like this (.*)
So, Lets consider an example.
Sting message = "Hi, Mr.Xyz! Your account number is :- (1234567890) , (,*) &$#%#*(....))(((";
After escaping according to current regex what i get is,
Hi, Mr\.Xyz\! Your account number is \:\- \(1234567890\) , \(,\*\) \&\$\#\%\#\*\(\.\.\.\.\)\)\(\(\(
But is don't want to escape this part (.*) want to keep it as it is.
My above regex is only used for searching, So i just don't want to match with this part (.*) and my problem will be solved
Can anyone suggest regex that doesn't escape that part of the string?

See #nhahtdh for how to do this with a regex.
As an alternative, Here is a solution which does not use a regex, using Guava's CharMatcher instead:
private static final CharMatcher SPECIAL
= CharMatcher.anyOf("allspecialcharshere");
private static final String NO_ESCAPE = "(.*)";
public String doEncode(String input)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(input.length());
String tmp = input;
while (!tmp.isEmpty()) {
if (tmp.startsWith(NO_ESCAPE)) {
sb.append(NO_ESCAPE);
tmp = tmp.substring(NO_ESCAPE.length());
continue;
}
char c = tmp.charAt(0);
if (SPECIAL.matches(c))
sb.append('\\');
sb.append(c);
tmp = tmp.substring(1);
}
return sb.toString();
}

This answer is to demonstrate the possibility only. Using it in production code is questionable.
It is possible with Java String replaceAll function:
String input = "Hi, Mr.Xyz! Your account number is :- (1234567890) , (.*) &$#%#*(....))(((";
String output = input.replaceAll("\\G((?:[^()\\[\\]{}?+\\\\.$^*|!&##%_\":<>/;'`~-]|\\Q(.*)\\E)*+)([()\\[\\]{}?+\\\\.$^*|!&##%_\":<>/;'`~-])", "$1\\\\$2");
Result:
"Hi, Mr\.Xyz\! Your account number is \:\- \(1234567890\) , (.*) \&\$\#\%\#\*\(\.\.\.\.\)\)\(\(\("
Another test:
String input = "(.*) sdfHi test message <> >>>>><<<<f<f<,,,,<> <>(.*) sdf (.*) sdf (.*)";
Result:
"(.*) sdfHi test message \<\> \>\>\>\>\>\<\<\<\<f\<f\<,,,,\<\> \<\>(.*) sdf (.*) sdf (.*)"
Explanation
Raw regex:
\G((?:[^()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]|\Q(.*)\E)*+)([()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-])
Note that \ is escaped once more when the regex is specified inside the string, and " needs to be escaped. The resulting regex in string can be seen above.
Raw replacement string:
$1\\$2
Since $ has special meaning in replacement string, and you want to keep it for $2, you need to escape the \ so that \ won't escape the $. And putting the replacement string in quoted string, you need to double up the number of \ to escape the \.
Before we dissect the monster, let's talk about the idea. We will consume non-special characters, and the sequence that we don't want to replace, and as many times as possible. The next character will either be a special character not forming sequence we don't want to replace, or is the end of the string (which means that we have found all character that needs replacing if any).
Naturally, we can think of any arbitrary string as consisting of many of the following pattern consecutively: [0 or more (non-special character or special pattern not to be replace)][special character], and the string ends with [0 or more (non-special character or special pattern not to be replace)].
replaceAll function when used with a regex without \G may find matches that are not consecutive, which can cut in the middle of the sequence not to be replaced and mess it up. \G means the boundary of last match, and can be used to make sure the next match starts from where the last match left off.
\G: Starts from last match
((?:[^()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]|\Q(.\*)\E)*+): Capture 0 or more of, the non-special character or the special pattern not to be replaced. Note that I have added the possessive qualifier + after *. This will prevent the engine from backtracking when it cannot find the special character that we specify after this.
[^()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]: Negated character class of special characters.
\Q(.*)\E: Special sequence (.*) not to be replaced, literal quoted by \Q and \E.
([()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]): Capture the single special character.
The whole regex will match string with minimum length of 1 (the special character). The first capturing group contains the parts that shouldn't be replaced, and the 2nd capturing group contains the special character that should be replaced.

Match word in String in Java

I'm trying to match Strings that contain the word "#SP" (sans quotes, case insensitive) in Java. However, I'm finding using Regexes very difficult!
Strings I need to match:
"This is a sample #sp string",
"#SP string text...",
"String text #Sp"
Strings I do not want to match:
"Anything with #Spider",
"#Spin #Spoon #SPORK"
Here's what I have so far: http://ideone.com/B7hHkR .Could someone guide me through building my regexp?
I've also tried: "\\w*\\s*#sp\\w*\\s*" to no avail.
Edit: Here's the code from IDEone:
java.util.regex.Pattern p =
java.util.regex.Pattern.compile("\\b#SP\\b",
java.util.regex.Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
java.util.regex.Matcher m = p.matcher("s #SP s");
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Match!");
}

(edit: positive lookbehind not needed, only matching is done, not replacement)
You are yet another victim of Java's misnamed regex matching methods.
.matches() quite unfortunately so tries to match the whole input, which is a clear violation of the definition of "regex matching" (a regex can match anywhere in the input). The method you need to use is .find().
This is a braindead API, and unfortunately Java is not the only language having such misguided method names. Python also pleads guilty.
Also, you have the problem that \\b will detect on word boundaries and # is not part of a word. You need to use an alternation detecting either the beginning of input or a space.
Your code would need to look like this (non fully qualified classes):
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(^|\\s)#SP\\b", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher("s #SP s");
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Match!");
}

You're doing fine, but the \b in front of the # is misleading. \b is a word boundary, but # is already not a word character (i.e. it isn't in the set [0-9A-Za-z_]). Therefore, the space before the # isn't considered a word boundary. Change to:
java.util.regex.Pattern p =
java.util.regex.Pattern.compile("(^|\\s)#SP\\b",
java.util.regex.Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
The (^|\s) means: match either ^ OR \s, where ^ means the beginning of your string (e.g. "#SP String"), and \s means a whitespace character.

The regular expression "\\w*\\s*#sp\\w*\s*" will match 0 or more words, followed by 0 or more spaces, followed by #sp, followed by 0 or more words, followed by 0 or more spaces. My suggestion is to not use \s* to break words up in your expression, instead, use \b.
"(^|\b)#sp(\b|$)"

regex help in java

I'm trying to compare following strings with regex:
#[xyz="1","2"'"4"] ------- valid
#[xyz] ------------- valid
#[xyz="a5","4r"'"8dsa"] -- valid
#[xyz="asd"] -- invalid
#[xyz"asd"] --- invalid
#[xyz="8s"'"4"] - invalid
The valid pattern should be:
#[xyz then = sign then some chars then , then some chars then ' then some chars and finally ]. This means if there is characters after xyz then they must be in format ="XXX","XXX"'"XXX".
Or only #[xyz]. No character after xyz.
I have tried following regex, but it did not worked:
String regex = "#[xyz=\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\",\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"'\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"]";
Here the quotations (in part after xyz) are optional and number of characters between quotes are also not fixed and there could also be some characters before and after this pattern like asdadad #[xyz] adadad.

You can use the regex:
#\[xyz(?:="[a-zA-z0-9]+","[a-zA-z0-9]+"'"[a-zA-z0-9]+")?\]
See it
Expressed as Java string it'll be:
String regex = "#\\[xyz=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"\\]";
What was wrong with your regex?
[...] defines a character class. When you want to match literal [ and ] you need to escape it by preceding with a \.
[a-zA-z][0-9] match a single letter followed by a single digit. But you want one or more alphanumeric characters. So you need [a-zA-Z0-9]+

Use this:
String regex = "#\\[xyz(=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")?\\]";
When you write [a-zA-z][0-9] it expects a letter character and a digit after it. And you also have to escape first and last square braces because square braces have special meaning in regexes.
Explanation:
[a-zA-z0-9]+ means alphanumeric character (but not an underline) one or more times.
(=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")? means that expression in parentheses can be one time or not at all.

Since square brackets have a special meaning in regex, you used it by yourself, they define character classes, you need to escape them if you want to match them literally.
String regex = "#\\[xyz=\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\",\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"'\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"\\]";
The next problem is with '"[a-zA-z][0-9]' you define "first a letter, second a digit", you need to join those classes and add a quantifier:
String regex = "#\\[xyz=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"\\]";
See it here on Regexr

there could also be some characters before and after this pattern like
asdadad #[xyz] adadad.
Regex should be:
String regex = "(.)*#\\[xyz(=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")?\\](.)*";
The First and last (.)* will allow any string before the pattern as you have mentioned in your edit. As said by #ademiban this (=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")? will come one time or not at all. Other mistakes are also very well explained by Others +1 to all other.