Why replaceAll("*.","Myval"); got error?

Question

I got this String s="<tr><td>Myval";

I want to replace all Strings that is before "<td>" & include "<td>" to "";

 s=replaceAll("*.<td>",s);

So the result should be s="Myval" But it got Runtime error.

   12:39:31.035 [ERROR]  Uncaught exception escaped
java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Dangling meta character '*' near index 0 
*.<td>

How to fix?

possible duplicate of [Using regular expressions to parse HTML: why not?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/590747/using-regular-expressions-to-parse-html-why-not) — , Apr 07 '14 at 02:36

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 07 '14 at 02:44

1

In regular expressions, * quantifies the expression coming before it. Here, you've put a * at the beginning of the pattern, which is meaningless.

Maybe you wanted ".*<td>".

answered Apr 07 '14 at 02:44

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1 Answers1