Replace characters in a String, in a specific location

Question

I have the following string;

String s = "Hellow world,how are you?\"The other day, where where you?\"";

And I want to replace the , but only the one that is inside the quotation mark \"The other day, where where you?\".

Is it possible with regex?

suppose this [post](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1473155/how-to-get-data-between-quotes-in-java) is about getting the words inside quotes. — Rajith Pemabandu, Apr 20 '17 at 23:58

infiniteRefactor · Answer 1 · 2017-04-21T00:25:32.523

1

String s = "Hellow world,how are you?\"The other day, where where you?\"";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\"(.*?)\"");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(s);
while (matcher.find()) {
    s = s.substring(0, matcher.start()) + matcher.group().replace(',','X') + 
            s.substring(matcher.end(), s.length());                                  
}

If there are more then two quotes this splits the text into in quote/out of quote and only processes inside quotes. However if there are odd number of quotes (unmatched quotes), the last quote is ignored.

edited Apr 21 '17 at 00:25

answered Apr 21 '17 at 00:00

infiniteRefactor

1,940
15
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This is a good answer. If you change the regexp from `\"(.*)\"` to `\"([^\"]*)\"`, it will work for multiple pairs of quotes also. – clstrfsck Apr 21 '17 at 00:35
@msandiford I used `.*?` (reluctant matcher), that does the same thing. – infiniteRefactor Apr 21 '17 at 00:39

Alfakyn1 · Answer 2 · 2017-04-21T00:00:35.010

0

If you are sure this is always the last "," you can do that

String s = "Hellow world,how are you?\"The other day, where where you?\"";
int index = s.lastIndexOf(",");
if( index >= 0 )
    s = new StringBuilder(s).replace(index , index + 1,"X").toString();
System.out.println(s);

Hope it helps.

edited Apr 21 '17 at 00:00

answered Apr 20 '17 at 23:55

Alfakyn1

83
3
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Nop, i'm not sure if the "," is the last, thanks for the help. – Apr 21 '17 at 00:09
then look for "day," instead of only "," – Alfakyn1 Apr 21 '17 at 00:15

Replace characters in a String, in a specific location

2 Answers2