Java Reg Expression to wrap HTML tag around text

Question

I'm working on a text to HTML parser. I'm using the "@@" notation to mark a Bold character. Ex.

Example @@Bold text in a paragraph

Turns to:

Example <strong>Bold</strong> text in paragraph

The following code works, however I've found out that it works just on the last Bold notation found:

private static String escapeBold(String sCurrentLine) {
    if (sCurrentLine.indexOf("@@") < 0) {
        return sCurrentLine;
    }

    String newString = null;
    String oldString = null;
    String chars[] = sCurrentLine.split(" ");
    for (String s : chars) {
        if (s.startsWith("@@")) {
            newString = "<strong>" + s.replaceAll("@@", "") + "</strong>";
            oldString = s;
        }
    }
    return (sCurrentLine.replaceAll(oldString, newString));
}

Is there a simpler way to do it, maybe with a RegExpr ? Thanks!

To use as a reference: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/460557 — Jorge Campos, Sep 03 '15 at 14:27
My mistake- it parses only the last! I have corrected the question — user2824073, Sep 03 '15 at 14:31
@Jorge Campos No, he is not parsing html. He is adding html tags to a parsed string. Its getting annoying how people link to that question every time html and regex is in the same sentence. — James Wierzba, Sep 03 '15 at 14:37
You can use replaceAll: template.replaceAll("@@([^\\s]+)", "$1"); — maksim07, Sep 03 '15 at 14:41
@maksim07 `[^\\s]` can be written as `\\S` (I also included this in my answer, hope you don't mind). — Pshemo, Sep 03 '15 at 14:45

Pshemo · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-03T14:47:55.783

It looks like your method can look like

private static String escapeBold(String sCurrentLine) {
    return sCurrentLine.replaceAll("@@(\\w+)", "<strong>$1</strong>");
}

It will try to find each @@someWord and place someWord part in group 1. In replacement we are using match stored in group 1 via $1 and simply surrounding it with <strong> tags.

To understand this code you need to know that replaceAll(regex,replacement) uses regular expression (regex) to find part which we want to modify, and replacement describes how we want to modify it.
In regex \\w represents characters in range a-z A-Z 0-9 and _. If you want to include other characters you can create your own character class, or use \\S which represents all non-whitespace characters.

Java Reg Expression to wrap HTML tag around text

1 Answers1