How would I replace all that is not stored in the variable guess in the current Pattern with a "-"? The guess will change with different method calls. I want to replace anything that is not the char guess(in this case => 'e') with a "-".
String word = "ally";
char guess = 'e';
String currentPattern = word.replaceAll("[^guess]", "-");
Obviously, this does not work.
You almost have it. Use String concatenation:
String currentPattern = word.replaceAll("[^" + guess + "]", "-");
This approach only works if you don't have regex metacharacters within guess, which need to be escaped within character classes. Otherwise a PatternSyntaxException will be thrown.
This question shows that in your case, where you only add a char to your character class, a PatternSyntaxException won't happen even if you don't escape anything.
guess is a char, so it is always only 1 character.
You are almost there, just use + concatenation operator to concatenate guess with the regex part.
String word = "ally";
char guess = 'e';
String currentPattern = word.replaceAll("[^"+guess+"]", "-");
System.out.println(currentPattern);
You need to include the variable explicitly in the regex string:
String word = "alely";
char guess = 'e';
System.out.println(word.replaceAll(String.format("[^%s]", guess), "-"));
Turn it into a method?
public String replaceAllExcept( String input, char pattern ) {
return input.replaceAll( "[^" + pattern + "]", "-" );
}
System.out.println( replaceAllExcept( "ally", 'e' );
System.out.println( replaceAllExcept( "tree", 'e' );
