Match only first and last character of a string - java

I had a look at other stackoverflow questions and couldn't find one that asked the same question, so here it is:
How do you match the first and last characters of a string (can be multi-line or empty).
So for example:
String = "this is a simple sentence"
Note that the string includes the beginning and ending quotation marks.
How do I get match the first and last characters where the string begins and ends with a quotation mark (").
I tried:
^"|$" and \A"\Z"
but these do not produce the desired result.
Thanks for your help in advance :)


Is this what you are looking for?
String input = "\"this is a simple sentence\"";
String result = input.replaceFirst("(?s)^\"(.*)\"$", " $1 ");
This will replace the first and last character of the input string with spaces if it starts and ends with ". It will also work across multiple lines since the DOTALL flag is specified by (?s).


The regex that matches the whole input ".*". In java, it looks like this:
String regex = "\".*\"";
System.out.println("\"this is a simple sentence\"".matches(regex)); // true
System.out.println("this is a simple sentence".matches(regex)); // false
System.out.println("this is a simple sentence\"".matches(regex)); // false
If you want to remove the quotes, use this:
String input = "\"this is a simple sentence\"";
input = input.replaceAll("(^\"|\"$)", "")); // this is a simple sentence (without any quotes)
If you want this to work over multiple lines, use this:
String input = "\"this is a simple sentence\"\n\"and another sentence\"";
System.out.println(input + "\n");
input = input.replaceAll("(?m)(^\"|\"$)", "");
System.out.println(input);
which produces output:
"this is a simple sentence"
"and another sentence"
this is a simple sentence
and another sentence
Explanation of regex (?m)(^"|"$):
(?m) means "Caret and dollar match after and before newlines for the remainder of the regular expression"
(^"|"$) means ^" OR "$, which means "start of line then a double quote" OR "double quote then end of line"


Why not use the simple logic of getting the first and last characters based on charAt method of String? Place a few checks for empty/incomplete strings and you should be done.


String regexp = "(?s)\".*\"";
String data = "\"This is some\n\ndata\"";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile(regexp).matcher(data);
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Match starts at " + m.start() + " and ends at " + m.end());
}

Related

split string based on text qualifier regex java

I want to split a string based on text qualifier for example
"1","10411721","MikeTison","08/11/2009","21/11/2009","2800.00","002934538","051","New York","10411720-002",".\Images\b.jpg",".\RTF\b.rtf"
Qualifer="
Spliter = ,
I want to split string based on Spliter , but if Spliter comes inside qualifier " than ignore it and return string including Spliter .
Regular expression i am using is (?:|,)(\"(?:[^\"]+|\"\")*\"|[^,]*)
but this regular expression only returns commas,please help me in this perspective as i am new to regular expressions
please note that if we have newline characters in string ie \r\n than it should ignore newline character
"1","10411","Muis","a","21/11/2009","2800.06","0029683778","03005136851","Awan","10411720-001",".\Images\a.jpg",".\RTF\a.rtf"
"2","08/10/2009","07:32","Call","On-Net","030092343242342376543","Monk","00:00","1.500","0.000","10.000","0.200"
"2","08/10/2009","02:50","Call","Off-Net","030092343242342376543","Une","08:00","1.500","2.000","20.000","3.500"
"2","09/10/2009","03:55","SMS","On-Net","030092343242342376543","Mink","00:00","1.500","0.000","5.000","100.500"
"2","09/10/2009","12:30","Call","Off-Net","030092343242342376543","Zog","01:01","3.500","3.000","70.000","6.500"
"2","09/10/2009","09:11","Call","On-Net","030092343242342376543","Monk","02:30","2.00","2.000","90.000","4.000"

Probably easiest solution is not searching for place to split, but finding elements which you want to return. In your case these elements
starts "
ends with "
have no " inside.
So you try with something like
String data = "\"1\",\"10411721\",\"MikeTison\",\"08/11/2009\",\"21/11/2009\",\"2800.00\",\"002934538\",\"051\",\"New York\",\"10411720-002\",\".\\Images\\b.jpg\",\".\\RTF\\b.rtf\"";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\"([^\"]+)\"");
Matcher m = p.matcher(data);
while(m.find()){
System.out.println(m.group(1));
}
Output:
1
10411721
MikeTison
08/11/2009
21/11/2009
2800.00
002934538
051
New York
10411720-002
.\Images\b.jpg
.\RTF\b.rtf

You can split using this regex:
String[] arr = input.split( "(?=(([^\"]*\"){2})*[^\"]*$),+" );
This regex will split on commas if those are outside double quotes by using a lookahead to make sure there are even number of quotes after a comma.

Remove the first and the last character of the whole string. Then split with ","
String test = "\"1\",\"10411721\",\"MikeTison\",\"08/11/2009\",\"21/11/2009\",\"2800.00\",\"002934538\",\"051\",\"New York\",\"10411720-002\",\".\\Images\\b.jpg\",\".\\RTF\\b.rtf\"";
if (test.length() > 0)
test = test.substring(1, test.length()-1);
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(test.split("\",\"")));

This works even if you have new line character..try it out
String str="\"1\",\"10411721\",\"MikeTison\",\"08/11/2009\",\"21/11/2009\",\"2800.00\",\"002934538\",\"051\",\"New York\",\"10411720-002\",\".\\Images\\b.jpg\",\".\\RTF\\b.rtf\"";
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(str.split(",(?=([^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*[^\"]*$)")));

How to replace last letter to another letter in java using regular expression

i have seen to replace "," to "." by using ".$"|",$", but this logic is not working with alphabets.
i need to replace last letter of a word to another letter for all word in string containing EXAMPLE_TEST using java
this is my code
Pattern replace = Pattern.compile("n$");//here got the real problem
matcher2 = replace.matcher(EXAMPLE_TEST);
EXAMPLE_TEST=matcher2.replaceAll("k");
i also tried "//n$" ,"\n$" etc
Please help me to get the solution
input text=>njan ayman
output text=> njak aymak

Instead of the end of string $ anchor, use a word boundary \b
String s = "njan ayman";
s = s.replaceAll("n\\b", "k");
System.out.println(s); //=> "njak aymak"

You can use lookahead and group matching:
String EXAMPLE_TEST = "njan ayman";
s = EXAMPLE_TEST.replaceAll("(n)(?=\\s|$)", "k");
System.out.println("s = " + s); // prints: s = njak aymak
Explanation:
(n) - the matched word character
(?=\\s|$) - which is followed by a space or at the end of the line (lookahead)
The above is only an example! if you want to switch every comma with a period the middle line should be changed to:
s = s.replaceAll("(,)(?=\\s|$)", "\\.");

Here's how I would set it up:
(?=.\b)\w
Which in Java would need to be escaped as following:
(?=.\\b)\\w
It translates to something like "a character (\w) after (?=) any single character (.) at the end of a word (\b)".
String s = "njan ayman aowkdwo wdonwan. wadawd,.. wadwdawd;";
s = s.replaceAll("(?=.\\b)\\w", "");
System.out.println(s); //nja ayma aowkdw wdonwa. wadaw,.. wadwdaw;
This removes the last character of all words, but leaves following non-alphanumeric characters. You can specify only specific characters to remove/replace by changing the . to something else.
However, the other answers are perfectly good and might achieve exactly what you are looking for.

if (word.endsWith("char oldletter")) {
name = name.substring(0, name.length() - 1 "char newletter");
}

Subtle Java Regular Expressions

String str = "1234545";
String regex = "\\d*";
Pattern p1 = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher m1 = p1.matcher(str);
while (m1.find()) {
System.out.print(m1.group() + " found at index : ");
System.out.print(m1.start());
}
The output of this program is 1234545 found at index:0 found at index:7.
My question is:
why is there a space printed when actually there is no space in the str.

The space printed between "index:0" and "at index:7" is coming from the string literal that you print. It was supposed to come after the matched string; however, in this case the match is empty.
Here is what's going on: the first match consumes all digits in the string, leaving zero characters for the following match. However, the following match succeeds, because the asterisk * in your expression allows matching empty strings.
To avoid this confusion in the future, add delimiter characters around the actual match, like this:
System.out.print("'" + m1.group() + "' at index : ");
Now you would see an empty pair of single quotes, showing that the match was empty.

Java - Regex Match Multiple Words

Lets say that you want to match a string with the following regex:
".when is (\w+)." - I am trying to get the event after 'when is'
I can get the event with matcher.group(index) but this doesnt work if the event is like Veteran's Day since it is two words. I am only able to get the first word after 'when is'
What regex should I use to get all of the words after 'when is'
Also, lets say I want to capture someones bday like
'when is * birthday
How do I capture all of the text between is and birthday with regex?

You could try this:
^when is (.*)$
This will find a string that starts with when is and capture everything else to the end of the line.
The regex will return one group. You can access it like so:
String line = "when is Veteran's Day.";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^when is (.*)$");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(line);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println("group 1: " + matcher.group(1));
System.out.println("group 2: " + matcher.group(2));
}
And the output should be:
group 1: when is Veteran's Day.
group 2: Veteran's Day.

If you want to allow whitespace to be matched, you should explicitly allow whitespace.
([\w\s]+)
However, roydukkey's solution will work if you want to capture everything after when is.

Don't use regular expressions when you don't need to!! Although the theory of regular expressions is beautiful in the thought that you can have a string do code operations for you, it is very memory inefficient for simple use cases.
If you are trying to get the word after "when is" ending by a space, you could do something like this:
String start = "when is ";
String end = " ";
int startLocation = fullString.indexOf(start) + start.length();
String afterStart = fullString.substring(startLocation, fullString.length());
String word = afterStart.substring(0, afterStart.indexOf(end));
If you know the last word is Day, you can just make end = "Day" and add the length of that string of where to end the second substring.

You can express this as a character class and include spaces in it: when is ([\w ]+).

\w only includes word characters, which doesn't include spaces. Use [\w ]+ instead.

Parse and remove special characters in java regex

So we were looking at some of the other regex posts and we are having trouble removing a special case in one instance; the special character is in the beginning of the word.
We have the following line in our code:
String k = s.replaceAll("([a-z]+)[()?:!.,;]*", "$1");
where s is a singular word. For example, when parsing the sentence "(hi hi hi)" by tokenizing it, and then performing the replaceAll function on each token, we get an output of:
(hi
hi
hi
What are we missing in our regex?

You can use an easier approach - replace the characters that you do not want with spaces:
String k = s.replaceAll("[()?:!.,;]+", " ");

Position matters so you would need to match the excluded charcters before the capturing group also:
String k = s.replaceAll("[()?:!.,;]*([a-z]+)[()?:!.,;]*", "$1");

your replace just removed the "special chars" after the [a-z]+, that's why the ( before hi is left there.
If you know s is a single word
you could either:
String k = s.replaceAll("\\W*(\\w+)\\W*", "$1");
or
String k = s.replaceAll("\\W*", "");

This can be more simple
try this :
String oldString = "Hi There ##$ What is %#your name?##$##$ 0123$$";
System.out.println(oldString.replaceAll("[\\p{Punct}\\s\\d]+", " ");
output :
Hi There What is your name 0123
So it also accepts numeric.
.replaceAll("[\p{Punct}\s\d]+", " ");
will replace alll the Punctuations used which includes almost all the special characters.

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