I have following string
String str = "replace :) :) with some other string";
And I want to replace first occurance of :) with some other string
And I used str.replaceFirst(":)","hi");
it gives following exception
"Unmatched closing ')'"
I tried using replace function but it replaced all occurance of :).
The replaceFirst method takes a regular expression as its first parameter. Since ) is a special character in regular expressions, you must quote it. Try:
str.replaceFirst(":\\)", "hi");
The double backslashes are needed because the double-quoted string also uses backslash as a quote character.
The first argument to replaceFirst() is a regular expression, not just a character sequence. In regular expressions, the parantheses have special significance. You should escape the paranthesis like this:
str = str.replaceFirst(":\\)", "hi");
Apache Jakarta Commons are often the solution for this class of problems. In this case, I would have a look at commons-lang, espacially StringUtils.replaceOnce().
