java String, replaceall() but keep case in original string

Question

hello i make a program that can highlight strings into a webview(android) and i stuck at replacing string with colored one, with this piece of code

        String[] arr = "LION SAVANA".split(" ");//i split textview string to have words (here we suppose that user entered : "lion savana"


        String finalText = "the lion is a species of mamifer living into the savana"

        for (String ss : arr) {
            if (ss.length() > 2) {
                 ss = ss.replace("*","");
                finalText = finalText.replaceAll("(?i)" + ss, "<b style = \"color:#2575ff\";>" + ss + "</b>");//finally here i replace all lion or savana occurrences by blue ones -> but i not keeps case :(
            }
        }

after this loop the text will be "the LION is a species of mamifer living into the SAVANA" ,colored in blue like expected but with uppercase as i don't expect

the problem is the following : user enter "FOO" into the textview, but with my code all "foo" or "fOO" of "Foo" will be replaced by "FOO" and i wanna keep original case (upper, lower, or mixed) — Noj
– Noj, Commented Oct 14, 2015 at 19:35
i edited the question with strings to be more understandable — Noj
– Noj, Commented Oct 14, 2015 at 19:49

mezzodrinker · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-14 20:16:25Z

6

The code that you provided in your question does the following: it checks the input string case-insensitively for "LION" and "SAVANA" and replaces each with "<b style=\"...\">LION</b>" and "<b style=\"...\">SAVANA</b>" respectively.

If you want to get the original word, use backreferences like here. With that backreference in use, your replaceAll call would look like this:

finalText = finalText.replaceAll("(?i)(" + ss + ")", "<b style = \"color:#2575ff\">$1</b>");

edited Oct 14, 2015 at 20:16

answered Oct 14, 2015 at 20:08

mezzodrinker

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5 Comments

mezzodrinker Over a year ago

@Noj Yeah, you're right. $0 would've done the job as well.

Noj Over a year ago

ahaha ok, i think its better to doit with second parenthesis? right?

mezzodrinker Over a year ago

@Noj I added them in case you wanted to extend the regex with some other stuff. The paranthesis () around the variable ss turn it into a capturing group. Since this one is the first capturing group ((?i) is not a capturing group), I accessed it with $1 afterwards. $0 accesses the whole match, so for example if you used "(?i)"+ss+" something" as your regex, something would've been added to your replacement as well.

Noj Over a year ago

thank you again, i start to understand a bit more this replaceall function with filters. Now im so happy that my android encyclopedia (based on sparql queries) is better :D...

mezzodrinker Over a year ago

@Noj No worries, that's why I answered you. If you ever need to tinker with regular expressions again, I as a programmer myself recommend using a tool like regex101.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:52:14Z

3

ok i've found how to doit, here

so finally, i just replaced this line :

finalText = finalText.replaceAll("(?i)" + ss, "<b style = \"color:#2575ff\";>" + ss + "</b>");

by

finalText = finalText.replaceAll("(?i)" + ss, "<b style = \"color:#2575ff\";>" +"$0" + "</b>");

$0 apparently is the word that i want to keep with the same case

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:52

CommunityBot

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answered Oct 14, 2015 at 20:10

Noj

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