I need to replace some words in a text, but I need to put conditions in the replacement strategy as follows:
I want to replace word1 with word2:
String word1 = "word1";
String word2 = "word2";
but I don't want to replace word1 if it's preceded by word3 which is:
String word3 = "word3."; //with the dot at the ending
That is if the text is word3.word1 I don't want to touch it.
But I can't seem to handle that with word boundaries using String's replaceAll
method.
EDIT:
And also I don't want to change if word1 has a prefix or suffix of "-" character i.e. -word1 or word1- or -word1-
Any help would be appreciable.
I think this will give you a hint
String str = "word3.word1.word2.word1";
str.replaceAll("word3.word1", "word3.wordX1").replaceAll("word1", "word2").replaceAll("wordX1", "word1");
Use regular expressions with negative lookbehind: (?<!word3\\.)word1
I don't want to replace word1 if it's preceded by word3.
You need to use a negative lookbehind.
Unless you want to hard-code the words you probably want to use Pattern.quote
as well.
Here's some example code:
String word1 = "word1";
String word2 = "word2";
String word3 = "word3.";
String regex = String.format("(?<!%s)%s", Pattern.quote(word3),
Pattern.quote(word1));
String input = "aaa word1 bbb word3.word1 ccc";
String result = input.replaceAll(regex, word2);
System.out.println(result);
Output:
aaa word2 bbb word3.word1 ccc
(first word1
is replaced, second word1
is not replaced since it is preceeded by word3.
)
i m assuming the following scenario
String word1 = "word1";
String word2 = "word2";
String word3 = "word3";
String mysentence = "word3.myname.word1";
programatically you do like this
int word1loc = mysentence.indexOf(word1);
int word2loc = mysentence.indexOf(word2);
int word3loc = mysentence.indexOf(word3);
if (word1loc> word3loc){
mysentence.replaceAll(word1,word2);
}
i believe it may help you ...!