Replacing Characters in a String with each character from another String

Question

Essentially I need write a string method that receives two string arguments and replaces every character that exists in the second String with "" in the first. For example the first String toBeFixed = "I have a wonderful AMD CPU. I also like cheese." and the second String toReplaceWith ="oils". The string returned would be "I have a wnderfu AMD CPU. I a ke cheee."

Here is what I've got:

    public class removeChars
{
    public static String removeChars(String str, String remove) 
        {
            String fixed = str.replaceAll(remove,""); 

            return(fixed);
        }

}

I'm not sure if this is a misunderstanding of how the replaceAll method is used as I've seen things like

str = str.replaceAll("[aeiou]", "");

Ideally I'd figure out a way to toss my second string(remove) in there and then be done with it, but I'm not sure this is possible. I get a feeling this is a slightly more complicated problem... I'm not familiar with Array Lists and it seems the immutability of Strings might cause some issues for me.

This method should be able to deal with strings of any value entered. Any help or direction would be very much appreciated!

user1131435 · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-25 07:11:53Z

1

String.replaceAll takes a Regex statement as its first argument. Matching "oils" will this match specifically the phrase "oils".

Instead, you had the right idea in your post. Matching "["+remove+"]" will do the trick, so long as your removal string contains no reserved regex symbols such as brackets, periods, etc. (I'm not sure about duplicate characters.)

If it does, then first filter the removal string.

answered Apr 25, 2013 at 7:11

user1131435

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2 Comments

supertommy Over a year ago

Works as I needed. Thanks!I'm not sure I understand why that syntax works though. What purpose does the concatenation serve here?

user1131435 Over a year ago

As I said, replaceAll takes a regular expression (regex) statement as input. Regex syntax is such that brackets denote a possible set of characters - any other set of unmodified characters is a literal set. That link is worth a good read. Regex is powerful and useful.

patrick.elmquist · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-25 07:31:02Z

1

Maybe not the most efficient solution but it's simple:

public class removeChars {
    public static String removeChars(String str, String remove) {
        String fixed = str;

        for(int i = 0; i < remove.length(); i++) 
             fixed = fixed.replaceAll(remove.charAt(i)+"","");  

        return fixed;
    }
}

edited Apr 25, 2013 at 7:31

answered Apr 25, 2013 at 7:18

patrick.elmquist

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Comments

Marco Forberg · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-25 07:17:55Z

0

This should work. replace works just like replaceAll - only with values rather than a regex

public class removeChars {
    public static String removeChars(String str, String remove) {
        String fixed = str; 

        for(int index = 0; index < remove.length; index++) {
            fixed = fixed.replace(remove.substring(index, index+1), "");
            // this replaces all appearances of every single letter of remove in str
        }

        return(fixed);
    }
}

answered Apr 25, 2013 at 7:17

Marco Forberg

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