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How to use string.replaceAll to change everything after a certain word

I have the following string: http://localhost:somePort/abc/soap/1.0
I want the string to just look like this: http://localhost:somePort/abc.
I want to use string.replaceAll but can't seem to get the regex right. My code looks like this: someString.replaceAll(".*\\babc\\b.*", "abc");
I'm wondering what I'm missing? I don't want to split the string or use .replaceFirst, as many solutions suggest.

It would seem to make more sense to use substring, but if you must use replaceAll, here's a way to do it.
You want to replace /abc and everything after it with just /abc.
string = string.replaceAll("/abc.*", "/abc")
If you want to be more discriminating you can include a word boundary after abc, giving you
string = string.replaceAll("/abc\\b.*", "/abc")

Just for explanation on the given regex, why it wont work:
\b \b - word boundaries are not required here and also as .* is added in the beginning it matches the whole string and when you try to replace it with "abc" it will replace the entire match with "abc". Hence you get the wrong answer. Instead, only try to match what is required and then whatever is matched that will be replaced with "abc" string.
someString.replaceAll("/abc.*", "/abc");
/abc.* - Looks specifically for /abc followed by 0 or more characters
/abc - Replaces the above match with /abc

You should use replaceFirst since after first match you are removing all after
text= text.replaceFirst("/abc.*", "/abc");
Or
You can use indexOf to get the index of certain word and then get substring.
String findWord = "abc";
text = text.substring(0, text.indexOf(findWord) + findWord.length());

Java regex for matching #<string>vs<string>

I have a string "Waiting for match #indvspak and #indvsaus" and want to match the strings "#indvspak" and "#indvsaus" seperately.
I am using the following regex (^|)#.*vs.+?\s\b. But it matches the entire string starting from the hash sign. How can i achieve my requirement please help.

I though you want to match the string which startswith # contains vs and the whole string must be preceded by a non-space character.
"(?<!\\S)#\\S*vs\\S+"
(?<!\\S) negative look-behind asserts that the match won't be preceded by a non-space character.
Code:
String s = "Waiting for match #indvspak and #indvsaus";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(?<!\\S)#\\S*vs\\S+").matcher(s);
while(m.find())
{
System.out.println(m.group());
}
Output:
#indvspak
#indvsaus

You need this regex:
#[^\\s]+
it matches anything after (including) # but not spaces.
Edit:
As #AvinashRaj suggested, if you want to ensure "vs" appears in the hashtag, you should use a negative lookbehind.
I highly recommend you to go though the String API, there are many methods that can help you with your problem.

EDITED
(copied from other answer comments)
Use this:
"(?<!\\B)#\\w+vs\\o/\S#vas\\S-[]"
Easy...

Whitespace in Java's regular expression

I'm trying to write a regular expression to mach an IRC PRIVMSG string. It is something like:
:nick!name#some.host.com PRIVMSG #channel :message body
So i wrote the following code:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^:.*\\sPRIVMSG\\s#.*\\s:");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(msg);
if(matcher.matches()) {
System.out.println(msg);
}
It does not work. I got no matches. When I test the regular expression using online javascript testers, I got matches.
I tried to find the reason, why it doesn't work and I found that there's something wrong with the whitespace symbol. The following pattern will give me some matches:
Pattern.compile("^:.*");
But the pattern with \s will not:
Pattern.compile("^:.*\\s");
It's confusing.

The java matches method strikes again! That method only returns true if the entire string matches the input. You didn't include anything that captures the message body after the second colon, so the entire string is not a match. It works in testers because 'normal' regex is a 'match' if any part of the input matches.
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^:.*?\\sPRIVMSG\\s#.*?\\s:.*$");
Should match

If you look at the documentation for matches(), uou will notice that it is trying to match the entire string. You need to fix your regexp or use find() to iterate through the substring matches.

How to find the exact word using a regex in Java?

Consider the following code snippet:
String input = "Print this";
System.out.println(input.matches("\\bthis\\b"));
Output
false
What could be possibly wrong with this approach? If it is wrong, then what is the right solution to find the exact word match?
PS: I have found a variety of similar questions here but none of them provide the solution I am looking for.
Thanks in advance.

When you use the matches() method, it is trying to match the entire input. In your example, the input "Print this" doesn't match the pattern because the word "Print" isn't matched.
So you need to add something to the regex to match the initial part of the string, e.g.
.*\\bthis\\b
And if you want to allow extra text at the end of the line too:
.*\\bthis\\b.*
Alternatively, use a Matcher object and use Matcher.find() to find matches within the input string:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\bthis\\b");
Matcher m = p.matcher("Print this");
m.find();
System.out.println(m.group());
Output:
this
If you want to find multiple matches in a line, you can call find() and group() repeatedly to extract them all.

Full example method for matcher:
public static String REGEX_FIND_WORD="(?i).*?\\b%s\\b.*?";
public static boolean containsWord(String text, String word) {
String regex=String.format(REGEX_FIND_WORD, Pattern.quote(word));
return text.matches(regex);
}
Explain:
(?i) - ignorecase
.*? - allow (optionally) any characters before
\b - word boundary
%s - variable to be changed by String.format (quoted to avoid regex
errors)
\b - word boundary
.*? - allow (optionally) any characters after

For a good explanation, see: http://www.regular-expressions.info/java.html
myString.matches("regex") returns true or false depending whether the
string can be matched entirely by the regular expression. It is
important to remember that String.matches() only returns true if the
entire string can be matched. In other words: "regex" is applied as if
you had written "^regex$" with start and end of string anchors. This
is different from most other regex libraries, where the "quick match
test" method returns true if the regex can be matched anywhere in the
string. If myString is abc then myString.matches("bc") returns false.
bc matches abc, but ^bc$ (which is really being used here) does not.
This writes "true":
String input = "Print this";
System.out.println(input.matches(".*\\bthis\\b"));

You may use groups to find the exact word. Regex API specifies groups by parentheses. For example:
A(B(C))D
This statement consists of three groups, which are indexed from 0.
0th group - ABCD
1st group - BC
2nd group - C
So if you need to find some specific word, you may use two methods in Matcher class such as: find() to find statement specified by regex, and then get a String object specified by its group number:
String statement = "Hello, my beautiful world";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("Hello, my (\\w+).*");
Matcher m = pattern.matcher(statement);
m.find();
System.out.println(m.group(1));
The above code result will be "beautiful"

Is your searchString going to be regular expression? if not simply use String.contains(CharSequence s)

System.out.println(input.matches(".*\\bthis$"));
Also works. Here the .* matches anything before the space and then this is matched to be word in the end.

Problem replacing words using [^a-zA-Z] regex

Just could not get this one and googling did not help much either..
First something that I know: Given a string and a regex, how to replace all the occurrences of strings that matches this regular expression by a replacement string ? Use the replaceAll() method in the String class.
Now something that I am unable to do. The regex I have in my code now is [^a-zA-Z] and I know for sure that this regex is definitely going to have a range. Only some more characters might be added to the list. What I need as output in the code below is Worksheet+blah but what I get using replaceAll() is Worksheet++++blah
String homeworkTitle = "Worksheet%#5_blah";
String unwantedCharactersRegex = "[^a-zA-Z]";
String replacementString = "+";
homeworkTitle = homeworkTitle.replaceAll(unwantedCharactersRegex,replacementString);
System.out.println(homeworkTitle);
What is the way to achieve the output that I wish for? Are there any Java methods that I am missing here?

[^a-zA-Z]+
Will do it nicely.
You just need a greedy quantifier in order to match as many non-alphabetical characters you can, and replace the all match by one '+' (a - by default - greedy quantifier)
Note: [^a-zA-Z]+? would make the '+' quantifier lazy, and would have give you the same result than [^a-zA-Z], since it would only have matched only one non-alphabetical character at a time.

String unwantedCharactersRegex = "[^a-zA-Z]"
This matches a single non-letter. So each single non-letter is replaced by a +. You need to say "one or more", so try
String unwantedCharactersRegex = "[^a-zA-Z]+"