How can I manipulate part of a string in java using regular expressions

Question

I have a string that looks like this:

String pathTokenString = "CMS/{brandPath}/Shows/{showPath}";

I want to remove the Shows part and everything that follows. I also want to replace "{brandPath}" with a token that I'm given.

This has been my approach. However, my string isn't getting updated at all:

//remove the '/Shows/{showPath}'
pathTokenString = pathTokenString.replace("/Shows$", "");

//replace passed in brandPath in the tokenString
String answer = pathTokenString.replace("{(.*?)}", brandPath);

Is there something wrong with my regular expressions?

@vks I just tried that and it didn't work. Is it a problem with using replace()? should I be using something else? — DanielD
– DanielD, Commented May 1, 2015 at 17:52

M A · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-01 17:52:52Z

1

You should use the replaceAll method instead of replace when you want to pass a regex string as the pattern to be replaced. Also your regex patterns should be updated:

pathTokenString = pathTokenString.replaceAll("/Shows.*$", "");

// The curly braces need to be escaped because they denote quantifiers
String answer = pathTokenString.replaceAll("\\{(.*?)\\}", brandPath);

answered May 1, 2015 at 17:52

M A

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2 Comments

DanielD Over a year ago

this worked great. However, I had a quick follow-up. I now want to use a StringBuilder since I know it's not efficient to create all these strings. Is there an equivalent of replaceAll() for a StringBuilder? thanks!

M A Over a year ago

@DanielD If it's just for these strings I don't really see how a StringBuilder could be more efficient. Your code is also more concise. Yet you can see stackoverflow.com/questions/3472663/….

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