How to replace first occurrence of string in Java

Question

I want to replace first occurrence of String in the following.

String test = "see Comments, this is for some test, help us"

**If test contains the input as follows it should not replace

See Comments, (with space at the end)
See comments,
See Comments**

I want to get the output as follows,

Output: this is for some test, help us

You can goolge-search directly your question, or shift your eyes a little bit to the right of this comment and check the RELATED questions... — hovanessyan
– hovanessyan, Commented Jun 5, 2012 at 12:42
Or you could look at the documentation of String and find replaceFirst()... — brimborium
– brimborium, Commented Jun 5, 2012 at 12:46
Google will tell you how to replace the first occurrence of a REGEX, not a string. — Sridhar Sarnobat
– Sridhar Sarnobat, Commented Sep 11, 2016 at 4:14

Asif · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-05 20:33:53Z

106

You can use replaceFirst(String regex, String replacement) method of String.

edited Oct 5, 2016 at 20:33

answered Jun 5, 2012 at 12:42

Asif

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7 Comments

Sridhar Sarnobat Over a year ago

This is for REGEXes not, Strings.

Asif Over a year ago

@Sridhar-Sarnobat this is understood by the parameters I have mentioned in the Answer I guess? And that's how it is supposed to be used. .

HopeKing Over a year ago

This might be for regex, but will work even if you give a String instead of a builtup regex. I just tested. So the above discuss confuses people who see this. The answer is perfect.

Sridhar Sarnobat Over a year ago

What if you are trying to replace a string that contains -?

Holger Over a year ago

@Sridhar-Sarnobat when the search string contains pattern characters that are not supposed to be interpreted, you may filter the string through Pattern.quote(…) first. Though, it might be more efficient to use Pattern.compile(searchString, Pattern.LITERAL).matcher(input) .replaceAll(replacement) then…

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Sridhar Sarnobat · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-06 05:46:42Z

23

You should use already tested and well documented libraries in favor of writing your own code.

org.apache.commons.lang3.
  StringUtils.replaceOnce("coast-to-coast", "coast", "") = "-to-coast"

Javadoc

https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/apidocs/org/apache/commons/lang3/StringUtils.html#replaceOnce-java.lang.String-java.lang.String-java.lang.String-

There's even a version that is case insensitive (which is good).

Maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
    <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
    <version>3.7</version>
</dependency>

Credits

My answer is an augmentation of: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10861856/714112

edited Sep 6, 2018 at 5:46

answered Sep 26, 2016 at 3:45

Sridhar Sarnobat

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2 Comments

Stunner Over a year ago

I appreciate ur answer but because replaceFirst in String class is for regex. But just for one simple string replacement , I have to introduce a new library in my project. not worth .. any alternatives?

Sridhar Sarnobat Over a year ago

Yeah true, dynamically linked libraries are a pain. You could just copy and paste the library source code.

Socowi · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-19 14:17:55Z

21

You can use following statement to replace first occurrence of literal string with another literal string:

String result = input.replaceFirst(Pattern.quote(search), Matcher.quoteReplacement(replace));

However, this does a lot of work in the background which would not be needed with a dedicated function for replacing literal strings.

edited May 19, 2020 at 14:17

Socowi

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answered Apr 16, 2017 at 11:18

Hari Krishna

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3 Comments

Andrea Over a year ago

This is the best answer, because it also handles regex characters and it not relies on external libs.

Filip Stachowiak Over a year ago

Unfortunately it does not work, try this: "I want to earn in euro!".replaceFirst(Pattern.quote("euro"), "$");

Socowi Over a year ago

@FilipStachowiak fixed it.

Jared Burrows · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-11 16:15:34Z

14

Use substring(int beginIndex):

String test = "see Comments, this is for some test, help us";
String newString = test.substring(test.indexOf(",") + 2);
System.out.println(newString);

OUTPUT:

this is for some test, help us

edited Apr 11, 2014 at 16:15

Jared Burrows

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answered Jun 5, 2012 at 12:41

Eng.Fouad

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1 Comment

Sridhar Sarnobat Over a year ago

Wait, what if the string you want to replace isn't at the beginning of the input string?

user4311153 · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-25 15:59:13Z

3

You can use following method.

public static String replaceFirstOccurrenceOfString(String inputString, String stringToReplace,
        String stringToReplaceWith) {

    int length = stringToReplace.length();
    int inputLength = inputString.length();

    int startingIndexofTheStringToReplace = inputString.indexOf(stringToReplace);

    String finalString = inputString.substring(0, startingIndexofTheStringToReplace) + stringToReplaceWith
            + inputString.substring(startingIndexofTheStringToReplace + length, inputLength);

    return finalString;

}

Following link provide examples for replacing first occurrence of string using with and without regular expressions.

answered Apr 25, 2017 at 15:59

user4311153

Comments

Thomas Boyles · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-14 19:43:37Z

-1

Use String replaceFirst to swap the first instance of the delimiter to something unique:

String input = "this=that=theother"
String[] arr = input.replaceFirst("=", "==").split('==',-1);
String key = arr[0];
String value = arr[1];
System.out.println(key + " = " + value);

answered Jun 14, 2013 at 19:43

Thomas Boyles

1

Comments

yılmaz · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-22 01:28:12Z

-1

You can also use this method in node.js;

public static String replaceFirstOccurance(String str, String chr, String replacement){
    String[] temp = str.split(chr, 2);
    return temp[0] + replacement + temp[1];
}

edited Apr 22, 2022 at 1:28

answered Oct 2, 2021 at 11:24

yılmaz

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1 Comment

Erik Pragt Over a year ago

That doesn't work, split works on regex-es.

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