I want to transform this string
M,L,XL,XXL
to
size M,size L,size XL,size XXL
using replaceAll() method. Is it possible?
3 Answers
You can do this using a Positive Lookahead.
String s = "M,L,XL,XXL";
s = s.replaceAll("(?=(\\w+))\\b", "size ");
System.out.println(s); // size M,size L,size XL,size XXL
See Live demo
Regular expression:
(?= look ahead to see if there is:
( group and capture to \1:
\w+ word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (1 or more times)
) end of \1
) end of look-ahead
\b the boundary between a word char (\w) and not a word char
2 Comments
SpringLearner
Nice answer +1 used regex
Luiggi Mendoza
@JqueryLearner note that the other answer also uses regexes, the fact that doesn't use complex wildcards and other regex patterns does not mean is not a regex at all.
Play tricky on comma, and be faster:
"M,L,XL,XXL".replaceAll("M", "size M").replaceAll(",",",size ")
6 Comments
Luiggi Mendoza
@JqueryLearner but this is a faster and simpler solution.
SpringLearner
@LuiggiMendoza yes I agree +1 from my side but this is not exactly as per OP
Luiggi Mendoza
@codeMan OP : original poster
Luiggi Mendoza
@JqueryLearner sometimes you want to use a flamethrower when you only need some matches...
Luiggi Mendoza
@JqueryLearner of course it does. This is the first result I got when searching regex performance: codinghorror.com/blog/2006/01/regex-performance.html
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I would propose the following:
"M,L,XL,XXL".replaceAll("((?:\\w+)(?:,|$))","size $1")
as shown in http://fiddle.re/zrq88. The $1 is a "backreference", referring to the first "capture group". A capture group is any text matched by an expression in parentheses, with some exceptions (e.g. when the left parenthesis is followed by ?:).
See http://www.regular-expressions.info/backref.html for more information.
replaceAll()?