Replacing multiple strings with one in java code

Question

I need to replace:

myVariable = "sample string is long " +
  "so I put rest of it in 2nd line." +
  " And sometimes in 3rd and so on";

with:

myVariable = "sample string is long so I put rest of it in 2nd line. And sometimes in 3rd and so on";

Additional issue: how to merge entities like above I they have other variables in concatenation chain?

myVar = "The number of the beast is " + numberOfTheBeast + " !!! So I said";

What I'd like to do is to change it into single string with params inside.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/47045/sprintf-equivalent-in-java — torquestomp, Apr 22 '13 at 14:13
Please don't post multiple issues in one question. Your first issue is an IDE-specific question - which IDE are you using? Also... why are you doing this? — Duncan Jones, Apr 22 '13 at 14:18
You mean in code or in runtime? I don't really understand the question itself. — CsBalazsHungary, Apr 22 '13 at 14:23
Let me try to explain why I need to do this. I have this code to maintain and I need to get rid of those string concatenations (also to i18n those strings). — Syjmick, Apr 22 '13 at 14:31
Those are completely different tasks. The first one is easy to do with a regular expression, the second will probably require a rather huge amount of work, because you need to do type-checking, etc. Writing an IDE extension is probably the easiest way to go (since it has type-checking built-in). — Bernhard Barker, Apr 22 '13 at 14:31

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '13 at 05:34

I'm not a regular expression guru, but these three regex replaces should do the trick. Most IDEs have a regex replace function.

Replace:     With:
\s*\+\s*\n    +   (space, plus, space)
"\s*\+\s*"   nothing
\s*\+\s*      +   (space, plus, space)

You might have to use \s*+\s*\r\n for the first regex, if you are on Windows.

1 Answers1