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Java Replace Unicode Characters in a String

I have a string which contains multiple unicode characters. I want to identify all these unicode characters, ex: \ uF06C, and replace it with a back slash and four hexa digits without "u" in it.
Example:
Source String: "add \uF06Cd1 Clause"
Result String: "add \F06Cd1 Clause"
How can achieve this in Java?
Edit:
Question in link Java Regex - How to replace a pattern or how to is different from this as my question deals with unicode character. Though it has multiple literals, it is considered as one single character by jvm and hence regex won't work.

The correct way to do this is using a regex to match the entire unicode definition and use group-replacement.
The regex to match the unicode-string:
A unicode-character looks like \uABCD, so \u, followed by a 4-character hexnumber string. Matching these can be done using
\\u[A-Fa-f\d]{4}
But there's a problem with this:
In a String like "just some \\uabcd arbitrary text" the \u would still get matched. So we need to make sure the \u is preceeded by an even number of \s:
(?<!\\)(\\\\)*\\u[A-Fa-f\d]{4}
Now as an output, we want a backslash followed by the hexnum-part. This can be done by group-replacement, so let's get start by grouping characters:
(?<!\\)(\\\\)*(\\u)([A-Fa-f\d]{4})
As a replacement we want all backlashes from the group that matches two backslashes, followed by a backslash and the hexnum-part of the unicode-literal:
$1\\$3
Now for the actual code:
String pattern = "(?<!\\\\)(\\\\\\\\)*(\\\\u)([A-Fa-f\\d]{4})";
String replace = "$1\\\\$3";
Matcher match = Pattern.compile(pattern).matcher(test);
String result = match.replaceAll(replace);
That's a lot of backslashes! Well, there's an issue with java, regex and backslash: backslashes need to be escaped in java and regex. So "\\\\" as a pattern-string in java matches one \ as regex-matched character.
EDIT:
On actual strings, the characters need to be filtered out and be replaced by their integer-representation:
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for(char c : in.toCharArray())
if(c > 127)
sb.append("\\").append(String.format("%04x", (int) c));
else
sb.append(c);
This assumes by "unicode-character" you mean non-ASCII-characters. This code will print any ASCII-character as is and output all other characters as backslash followed by their unicode-code. The definition "unicode-character" is rather vague though, as char in java always represents unicode-characters. This approach preserves any control-chars like "\n", "\r", etc., which is why I chose it over other definitions.

Try using String.replaceAll() method
s = s.replaceAll("\u", "\");

Regex required to update a character

I have a String : testing<b>s<b>tringwit<b>h</b>nomean<b>s</b>ing
I want to replace the character s with some other character sequence suppose : <b>X</b> but i want the character sequence s to remain intact i.e. regex should not update the character s with a previous character as "<".
I used the JAVA code :
String str = testing<b>s<b>tringwit<b>h</b>nomean<b>s</b>ing;
str = str.replace("s[^<]", "<b>X</b>");
The problem is that the regex would match 2 characters, s and following character if it is not ">" and Sting.replace would replace both the characters. I want only s to be replaced and not the following character.
Any help would be appreciated. Since i have lots of such replacements i don't want to use a loop matching each character and updating it sequentially.

There are other ways, but you could, for example, capture the second character and put it back:
str = str.replaceAll("s([^<])", "<b>X\\1</b>");

Looks like you want a negative lookahead:
s(?!<)
String str = "testing<b>s<b>tringwit<b>h</b>nomean<b>s</b>ing;";
System.out.println(str.replaceAll("s(?!<)", "<b>X</b>"));
output:
te<b>X</b>ting<b>s<b>tringwit<b>h</b>nomean<b>s</b>ing;

Use look arounds to assert, but not capture, surrounding text:
str = str.replaceAll("s(?![^<]))", "whatever");
Or, capture and put back using a back reference $1:
str = str.replaceAll("s([^<])", "whatever$1");
Note that you need to use replaceAll() (which use regex), rather than replace() (which uses plain text).

How to encode a string to replace all special characters

I have a string which contains special character. But I have to convert the string into a string without having any special character so I used Base64 But in Base64 we are using equals to symbol (=) which is a special character. But I want to convert the string into a string which will have only alphanumerical letters. Also I can't remove special character only i have to replace all the special characters to maintain unique between two different strings. How to achieve this, Which encoding will help me to achieve this?

The simplest option would be to encode the text to binary using UTF-8, and then convert the binary back to text as hex (two characters per byte). It won't be terribly efficient, but it will just be alphanumeric.
You could use base32 instead to be a bit more efficient, but that's likely to be significantly more work, unless you can find a library which supports it out of the box. (Libraries to perform hex encoding are very common.)

There are a number of variations of base64, some of which don't use padding. (You still have a couple of non-alphanumeric characters for characters 62 and 63.)
The Wikipedia page on base64 goes into the details, including the "standard" variations used for a number of common use-cases. (Does yours match one of those?)
If your strings have to be strictly alphanumeric, then you'll need to use hex encoding (one byte becomes 2 hex digits), or roll your own encoding scheme. Your stated requirements are rather unusual ...

Commons codec has a url safe version of base64, which emits - and _ instead of + and / characters
http://commons.apache.org/codec/apidocs/org/apache/commons/codec/binary/Base64.html#encodeBase64URLSafe(byte[])

The easiest way would be to use a regular expression to match all nonalphanumeric characters and replace them with an empty string.
// This will remove all special characters except space.
var cleaned = stringToReplace.replace(/[^\w\s]/gm, '')
Adding any special characters to the above regex will skip that character.
// This will remove all special characters except space and period.
var cleaned = stringToReplace.replace(/[^\w\s.]/gm, '')
A working example.
const regex = /[^\w\s]/gm;
const str = `This is a text with many special characters.
Hello, user, your password is 543#!\$32=!`;
const subst = ``;
// The substituted value will be contained in the result variable
const result = str.replace(regex, subst);
console.log('Substitution result: ', result);
Regex explained.
[^\w\s]/gm
Match a single character not present in the list below [^\w\s]
\w matches any word character (equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_])
\s matches any whitespace character (equivalent to [\r\n\t\f\v \u00a0\u1680\u2000-\u200a\u2028\u2029\u202f\u205f\u3000\ufeff])
Global pattern flags
g modifier: global. All matches (don't return after first match)
m modifier: multi line. Causes ^ and $ to match the begin/end of each line (not only begin/end of string)

If you truly can only use alphanumerical characters you will have to come up with an escaping scheme that uses one of those chars for example, use 0 as the escape, and then encode the special char as a 2 char hex encoding of the ascii. Use 000 to mean 0.
e.g.
This is my special sentence with a 0.
encodes to:
This020is020my020special020sentence020with020a02000002e

How to know Which character was replaced while using regex

String string = "Tĥïŝ ĩš â fůňķŷ Šťŕĭńġs not cool \"oops" ;
string = string.replaceAll("[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]+", ... );
The problem is that I want to append to non alphanumeric non whitespace characters an escape character. i.e.
" -> \"
' -> \'.
So what exactly should be a second argument in the replaceAll method ?
Or is there any other cool way (I don't want to hardcode)

If this is Java (I added the relevant tag), then you could do
String resultString = subjectString.replaceAll("[\\W\\S]", "\\\\$0");
which will replace any non-alnum/non-space character with its escaped counterpart.
Note that the regex is making no attempt to detect whether a character is already escaped. You should also be aware that \W in Java is not locale-aware, so it will match Unicode letters, too.

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 "\\".