I'm trying to go through a string and replace all instances of a regex-matching string. For some reason when I use if
then it will work and replace just one string instance of a regex-match. When I change the if
to while
then it does some weird replacement over itself and makes a mess on the first regex-matching string while not even touching the others...
pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
matcher = pattern.matcher(docToProcess);
while (matcher.find()) {
start = matcher.start();
end = matcher.end();
match = docToProcess.substring(start, end);
stringBuilder.replace(start, end, createRef(match));
docToProcess = stringBuilder.toString();
}
Aside from the sysouts I only added the last assignment. See if it helps:
// your snippet:
pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
matcher = pattern.matcher(docToProcess);
while (matcher.find()) {
start = matcher.start();
end = matcher.end();
match = docToProcess.substring(start, end);
String rep = createRef(match);
stringBuilder.replace(start, end, rep);
docToProcess = stringBuilder.toString();
// my addition:
System.out.println("Found: '" + matcher.group() + "'");
System.out.println("Replacing with: '" + rep + "'");
System.out.println(" --> " + docToProcess);
matcher = pattern.matcher(docToProcess);
}
Not sure exactly what problem you got but maybe this example will help a little:
I want to change names in sentence like:
- Jack -> Albert
- Albert -> Paul
- Paul -> Jack
We can do this with little help of appendReplacement and appendTail methods from Matcher
class
//this method can use Map<String,String>, or maybe even be replaced with Map.get(key)
static String getReplacement(String name) {
if ("Jack".equals(name))
return "Albert";
else if ("Albert".equals(name))
return "Paul";
else
return "Jack";
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
String sentence = "Jack and Albert are goint to see Paul. Jack is tall, " +
"Albert small and Paul is not in home.";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("Jack|Albert|Paul").matcher(sentence);
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
while (m.find()) {
m.appendReplacement(sb, getReplacement(m.group()));
}
m.appendTail(sb);
System.out.println(sb);
}
Output:
Albert and Paul are goint to see Jack. Albert is tall, Paul small and Jack is not in home.
If createRef(match) returns a string which is not the same length as (end - start) then the indexes you are using in docToProcess.substring(start, end) will potentially overlap.