Java regex to add space after closing tag if its not present

Question

I have following html string and I want to add space after all tags like </strong> where space is missing, only inside body. If there is a space already, extra space should not be added.

<html><head><title>test</title></head><body>This <strong>Super</strong> subject can be <strong>super</strong>test into object</body></html>

This should get converted to following:

<html><head><title>test</title></head><body>This <strong>Super</strong> subject can be <strong>super</strong> test into object</body></html>

Is this doable using regex? Can you help me with the regex?

s = s.replaceAll("(?<=</strong>)(?! )", " ") --- See demo

Andreas
– Andreas

2019-12-05 06:31:48 +00:00
Commented Dec 5, 2019 at 6:31 — Andreas
– Andreas, Commented Dec 5, 2019 at 6:31

Nick · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-05 07:08:17Z

4

You can use this regex, which will look for any closing tag (in the form </zzzz>) that is not followed by a space, and then replace it with $1:

(<\/[a-z]+>)(?! )

Demo on regex101

This will modify any closing tags in your HTML though. To only modify closing tags within the body, you could split the string first into the parts before the <body, between that and the closing </body and the balance of the string, and then only modify the part in the middle. For example,

String s = "<html><head><title>test</title></head><body>This <strong>Super</strong> subject can be <strong>super</strong>test into object</body></html>";
String [] pieces = s.split("</?body");
pieces[1] = pieces[1].replaceAll("(</[a-z]+>)(?! )", "$1 ");
s = pieces[0] + "<body" + pieces[1] + "</body" + pieces[2];
System.out.println(s);

Output:

<html><head><title>test</title></head><body>This <strong>Super</strong> subject can be <strong>super</strong> test into object</body></html>

edited Dec 5, 2019 at 7:08

answered Dec 5, 2019 at 6:47

Nick

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7 Comments

dev009 Over a year ago

this is good, but it adds extra spaces: <html><head><title>test</title> </head>

Nick Over a year ago

@dev009 I interpreted the question as you wanted space after every closing tag... is that not what you want?

dev009 Over a year ago

ohh no... not all.. only where there is no space, see the converted text

Nick Over a year ago

@dev009 sorry, what I meant was, after </title> etc., or did you just mean after </strong>?

Nick Over a year ago

@dev009 see my edit, it gives a way to only do the replacement inside the body

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