java - regex within string literal

Question

I'm trying to remove something from a string that looks like:

"name" : "12345"

it will always be that 12345 can be any number, is there a way to do this with something like:

string.replace("\"name\":\"[0-9]\",", "")

that doesn't work, and i've tried several things but nothing works.

thank you!

please explain what "doesn't work" mean? What happens and what do you expect to happen? — Felk
– Felk, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 12:47
Are you assigning the result of string.replace to another variable (or back to string; or printing it)? — Andy Turner
– Andy Turner, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 12:48
Use replaceAll, not replace. The former matches regexes; the latter matches the exact string. — Andy Turner
– Andy Turner, Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 12:48

Malte Hartwig · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-20 12:54:39Z

2

Add a + behind the number part in order for the regex to match numbers of any length. [0-9] alone will only match exactly 1 digit.

Furthermore, what about spaces? In your example there are spaces, in your code, there are none. You can add \\s* to match any (including none) white-space.

string.replaceAll("\"name\"\\s*:\\s*\"[0-9]+\",", "")

You can play around with it on Regex101.

Andy Turner's comment: You need to use replaceAll instead of replace. replace does not interpret the first parameter as a regex, but tries to find that exact string in your string.

edited Sep 20, 2017 at 12:54

answered Sep 20, 2017 at 12:49

Malte Hartwig

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Comments

Lucas Oliveira · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-20 12:56:42Z

1

this will do it for you

string.replaceAll( "\"name\"\\s*:\\s*\"\\d+\"", "" )

example:

final String string = "Some\"name\" : \"12345\"String";
System.out.println( string.replaceAll( "\"name\"\\s:\\s\"\\d+\"", "" )

will print the output:

SomeString

And it will work for any number

answered Sep 20, 2017 at 12:56

Lucas Oliveira

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Unknown_Coder · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-20 12:53:59Z

0

Replace "\"name\":\"[0-9]\" To "\"name\" : \"[0-9]*\""

answered Sep 20, 2017 at 12:53

Unknown_Coder

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pndey · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-20 13:18:47Z

0

I tried a regex like this

String regex="\\w+:\\d+";
        String data = "name:12345";
        System.out.println(data.matches(regex));

and output is true, you can try around this. \w+ matches one or more word characters and \d+ matches one or more numbers

answered Sep 20, 2017 at 13:18

pndey

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