How to remove multiple expressions from a String in java

Question

I have to remove Salutations like "C/O, C/o,c/o,S/O,S/o,s/o" etc from a string.These salutations comes a third party service. The service can return anything form these. How to do this effectively. I am doing this by using below code:

if(name.contains("C/O")){
            name = name.replace("C/O", "").trim();
            System.out.println("name: "+name);
        }else if(name.contains("S/O")){
            name = name.replace("S/O", "").trim();
            System.out.println("name: "+name);
        }else if(name.contains("c/o")){
            name = name.replace("c/o", "").trim();
            System.out.println("name: "+name);
        }else if(name.contains("S/o")){
            name = name.replace("S/o", "").trim();
            System.out.println("name: "+name);
        }

Any better approach to do this. Please suggest.

You should probably store all possible salutations in an array and loop through them, instead of having multiple if/else statements. — Bragolgirith
– Bragolgirith, Commented Jan 18, 2018 at 17:22
@Am_I_Helpful I can get any number of salutations and in any format like "D/O , d/o, D/o,W/o,H/O" etc. Should I put these many if blocks — AWS_Developer
– AWS_Developer, Commented Jan 18, 2018 at 17:22
In every case you basically do the same. Instead you may use regex and a single call to something like replaceAll("(?i)(C/O|S/O)", ""). The expression removes everything which is C/O or S/O, case insensitive. Then your code is only name = name.replaceAll("(?i)(C/O|S/O)", ""); and that's it. — Zabuzard
– Zabuzard, Commented Jan 18, 2018 at 17:25
You don't really need to check if name.contains(some_string) before performing the substitution name.replace(some_string, ""). — korolar
– korolar, Commented Jan 18, 2018 at 17:25

Bohemian · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-18 17:31:49Z

2

Say hello to regex!

name = name.replaceAll("(?i)[cs]/o\\s*", "");

The regex breakdown:

(?i) means ignore case
[cs] means "c" or "s"
\\s* means all white space following (if any)

answered Jan 18, 2018 at 17:31

Bohemian♦

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Bragolgirith · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-19 10:08:20Z

1

A traditional way to do this could look as follows:

String[] salutations = {"C/O", "S/O", "c/o", "S/o"};
for (String salutation : salutations)
{
    name = name.replace(salutation, "").trim();
}

edited Jan 19, 2018 at 10:08

answered Jan 18, 2018 at 17:28

Bragolgirith

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