Using java's regex api to insert words be

Question

I'm new to regular expressions and java so please bear with my newbish question.

I want to do the following:

If I have a string:

"I like ice cream only if it is chocolate ice cream. Chocolate cream"

and a pattern like

"chocolate ice cream"

I want to match and replace all words matched with a # surrounding them. Like this:

"I like #ice cream# only if it is #chocolate ice cream#. #Cholcolate cream#"

I used java's regex api and I understand I can use Matcher.replaceAll. But I'm having trouble coming up with a proper regex. I came up with this chocolate*\\s*ice*\\s*cream*. But the problem here is it's only matching the whole substring, i.e "chocolate ice cream". I think something like this could work:

chocolate|ice|cream|chocolate ice|ice cream|chocolate cream|chocolate ice cream

etc, i.e all permutations, but this would be cumbersome as the substring grows.

I would appreciate any ideas on proceeding in the right direction.

Does order matter? Do you want ice chocolate to match?

Qtax
– Qtax

2011-07-06 08:55:02 +00:00
Commented Jul 6, 2011 at 8:55 — Qtax
– Qtax, Commented Jul 6, 2011 at 8:55

Bart Kiers · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-06 09:09:21Z

7

Use the pattern:

(?i)\b((?:chocolate|ice|cream)(?:\s+(?:chocolate|ice|cream))*)\b

and replace it with:

#$1#

Demo:

String s = "I like ice cream only if it is chocolate ice cream. Chocolate cream";
s = s.replaceAll("(?i)\\b((?:chocolate|ice|cream)(?:\\s+(?:chocolate|ice|cream))*)\\b", "#$1#");
System.out.println(s);

The word boundaries cause "creamy" (and other such words) not to be replaced.

Note that this will change "ice ice" into "#ice ice#" (ie. the words can occur more than once!), as @stema mentioned in the comments.

edited Jul 6, 2011 at 9:09

answered Jul 6, 2011 at 9:02

Bart Kiers

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1 Comment

stema Over a year ago

Nice pattern if it is OK to match stuff like cream ice cream

Sean Patrick Floyd · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-06 09:02:40Z

3

(?:chocolate|ice|cream)(?:\s+(?:chocolate|ice|cream))*

This will match one or more of the specified words delimited by whitespace

edited Jul 6, 2011 at 9:02

answered Jul 6, 2011 at 8:56

Sean Patrick Floyd

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3 Comments

wjans Over a year ago

And maybe make it case insensitive to have the exact output as mentioned in the question (?i:chocolate|ice|cream)(?i:\\s+(?:chocolate|ice|cream))*

Bart Kiers Over a year ago

Note that "ice creamy" will now be changed into: "#ice cream#y". Perhaps that is what the OP wants, but perhaps not.

Sean Patrick Floyd Over a year ago

@Bart true, +1 to your solution for catching that :-)

hoipolloi · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-06 09:00:22Z

0

Try this:

final String source = "I like ice cream only if it is chocolate ice cream. Chocolate cream";
final String result = source.replaceAll("((?:[Cc]hocolate )?(?:[Ii]ce )?cream)", "#$1#");

// Prints I like #ice cream# only if it is #chocolate ice cream#. #Chocolate cream#
System.out.println(result);

See Optional Items for more information.

answered Jul 6, 2011 at 9:00

hoipolloi

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SJuan76 · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-06 09:05:15Z

0

Maybe you will find interesting MessageFormat from the Java API

Object[] testArgs = {new Long(3), "MyDisk"};

MessageFormat form = new MessageFormat(
  "The disk \"{1}\" contains {0} file(s).");

 System.out.println(form.format(testArgs));

 // output, with different testArgs
 output: The disk "MyDisk" contains 0 file(s).
 output: The disk "MyDisk" contains 1 file(s).
 output: The disk "MyDisk" contains 1,273 file(s).

answered Jul 6, 2011 at 9:05

SJuan76

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