I need to replace all "&" symbols with "&" in my text file but not the html codes such as & or "
I'm currently using row = row.replace("& ", "&");
but, as I said also the html codes are replaced e.g. " and I don't want this..
thanks
ps. I cannot add spaces after & because I need to replace it in words such as M&M or Ella & David
You could try a regex, e.g,
row = row.replaceAll("&(?![#a-zA-Z0-9]+;)", "&");
The regex replace & given that it's not followed by a sequence of '#a-zA-Z0-9' ending with ';'
ō form of strings. What you probably need is row.replaceAll("&(?![#a-zA-Z0-9]+;)", "&");
There's no general solution, since in your text there may be things like
&
which may mean either a single ampersand or be a malformed way of saying & which should be expressed as
&
However, the latter is quite improbable (unless you're escaping some HTML).
So try something like
row = row.replaceAll("&(?!(?:\\#|amp|quot|nbsp|\\d+);)", "&");
Btw., & is missing the final semicolon. Prefer & to using ASCII codes.
Try
String replacedAmpersands = row.replaceAll("&(?!(?:#\\d+|\\p{L}+);)", "&")
This will only replace ampersands that are not followed by #\d+; (hash, numbers, semicolon) or \p{L}+; (letters, semicolon).
The pattern "& " should be "&\\s", since whitespace has a pattern identifier too.
So the line should read row = row.replace("&\\s", "&");
& in M&MThis solution is more involved but my feeling is that it is fullproof, whereas the regex solutions may not be 100% correct (as per the famous "do not use regex for HTML stackoverflow thread").
Using Jsoup:
public static String html2text(String html) {
return Jsoup.parse(html).text();
}
This will give you for sure a text only containing the ampersands you need, not the rest.
Then create a Map containing on the left-hand side the phrases like M&M and Ella & David and then on the right hand side the phrases M&M and Ella & David
The final step is going back to the initial HTML text and replacing the strings on the LHS of the map with those of the RHS.
Edit: you can of course use any HTML parser you like - just wanted to give you a quick example of how easy it is to use one.
&or&, not just&.