Regular expression..retrieve text and replace

Question

I have an xml file like:

<pre>
    <book category="CHILDREN">
      <details title="Harry Potter" author="J K. Rowling">
    </book>
</pre>

How can I use substring on the string (in the xml file) and replace the author with xyzName?

Thanks in advance

Are you sure you want to do this? **You could get into legal trouble** *for not showing any code*. :P — TheLostMind, Aug 07 '14 at 05:58
Don't use regular expression for this, use an appropriate DOM — MadProgrammer, Aug 07 '14 at 06:02

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

If you would still like to use regex for this after noting the warnings,

Use the following regex replacement:

String contents = "<pre>\n" +
                      "<book category=\"CHILDREN\">\n" +
                        "<details title=\"Harry Potter\" author=\"J K. Rowling\">\n" +
                      "</book>\n" +
                  "</pre>";
String newContents = contents.replaceFirst("(?<=author=\")[^\"]+", "xyzName");

View a regex demo!

Expression explanation:

(?<=author=\") Asserts that our match is after char sequence 'author="'.
[^\"] Matches characters that are not '"'.
- + Once or more [greedy: match as many as possible].

Regular expression..retrieve text and replace

1 Answers1