Remove Punctuation issue

Question

Im trying to find a word in a string. However, due to a period it fails to recognize one word. Im trying to remove punctuation, however it seems to have no effect. Am I missing something here? This is the line of code I am using: s.replaceAll("([a-z] +) [?:!.,;]*","$1");

String test = "This is a line about testing tests. Tests are used to examine stuff";
    String key = "tests";
    int counter = 0;


    String[] testArray = test.toLowerCase().split(" ");

    for(String s : testArray)
    {
        s.replaceAll("([a-z] +) [?:!.,;]*","$1");
        System.out.println(s);
        if(s.equals(key))
        {
            System.out.println(key + " FOUND");
            counter++;
        }
    }

    System.out.println(key + " has been found " + counter + " times.");
}

I managed to find a solution (though may not be ideal) through using s = s.replaceAll("\W",""); Thanks for everyones guidance on how to solve this problem.

Take a look at this question and the selected answer: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/767759/occurences-of-substring-in-a-string][1] [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/767759/occurences-of-substring-in-a-string — Cristina_eGold, Mar 25 '13 at 16:00

Reimeus · Answer 1 · 2013-03-25T16:14:02.123

1

Strings are immutable. You would need assign the result of replaceAll to the new String:

s = s.replaceAll("([a-z] +)*[?:!.,;]*", "$1");
                           ^

Also your regex requires that a space exist between the word and the the punctuation. In the case of tests., this isn't true. You can adjust you regex with an optional (zero or more) character to account for this.

edited Mar 25 '13 at 16:14

answered Mar 25 '13 at 15:55

Reimeus

158,255
15
216
276

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 25 '13 at 16:22

1

You could also take advantage of the regex in the split operation. Try this:

String[] testArray = test.toLowerCase().split("\\W+");

This will split on apostrophe, so you may need to tweak it a bit with a specific list of characters.

answered Mar 25 '13 at 16:22

Charles Forsythe

1,831
11
12

Thanks, reached a similar answer also – Calgar99 Mar 25 '13 at 16:23

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 25 '13 at 16:07

Your regex doesn't seem to work as you want. If you want to find something which has period after that then this will work

([a-z]*) [?(:!.,;)*]

it returns "tests." when it's run on your given string.

Also

[?(:!.,;)*]

just points out the punctuation which will then can be replaced.

However I am not sure why you are not using substring() function.

Remove Punctuation issue

3 Answers3