How to extract a specific substring in Java

Question

I have a string that I define as

String string = "<html><color=black><b><center>Line1</center><center>Line2</center></b></font></html>";

that I apply to a JButton to get 2 lines of text on it, and that works perfectly. When I call the JButton.getText() method, it returns the whole string. What I want is to take the string it returns, and get the string "Line1Line2" from it. (So I want to remove all the HTML code and just get the text that appears on the screen.) I have tried using something like

if(string.contains("<html>"))
    {
        string.replace("<html>", "");
    }

and then doing the same thing for all the other "<(stuff)>", but if I then print the string, I still get the whole thing. I think using regular expressions is a better way than to manually remove all the "<(stuff)>", but I don't know how.

Any help would be most appreciated!

JB Nizet · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-30 08:14:47Z

3

string.replace() doesn't modify the string: a String is immutable. It returns a new string where the replacement has been done.

So your code should be

if (string.contains("<html>")) {
    string = string.replace("<html>", "");
}

answered Mar 30, 2015 at 8:14

JB Nizet

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1 Comment

BrianH Over a year ago

Thanks (again)! That's what I needed. That's twice I owe you now :)

Smutje · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-30 08:15:08Z

1

String is immutable, so String#replace does not change the String but rather returns the changed String.

string = string.replace("<html>", "");

and so on should do the thing.

answered Mar 30, 2015 at 8:15

Smutje

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Comments

Dragondraikk · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-30 08:15:20Z

1

String also has a replaceAll() method.

you could try string.replaceAll("<.*?>", "");

Also keep in mind that Strings in java are immutable and this operation will return a new String with your result

answered Mar 30, 2015 at 8:15

Dragondraikk

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