How do I....

[ddmeightball]

How do i search a string for a certain word, then replace that word with something else.

For example:
String sentance="This is an example";
String searchword="is";
String replaceword="was";

What I need to do is be able to search sentance for the string "is" and replace it with the string "was"

[CornedBee]

There's a replace method in java.lang.String.

[ddmeightball]

since I am using strings, should I use the replaceAll() method?

/**
 * Title:Editor project
 * @author Matthew Davis
 * Class Info 1314
 * Date: November 22, 2004
 **/
 package Editor;
 import java.util.StringTokenizer;

 public class Editor 
 { 
  	String document;
  	String searchText;
  	String replacementText;

 public Editor() 
  {
  }//end constructor 
  
 public void setDocument(String recdocument)
 	{
		document=recdocument;
    }
 
 public String getDocument()
 	{
		return document;
    }

public String replace(String searchText, String replacementText)
	{
          String [] token = new String[10];

          StringTokenizer sTokens = new StringTokenizer(document, ",");

          int count = 0;
          while(sTokens.hasMoreTokens()) 
          	{
      		  	token[count++] = sTokens.nextToken().trim();
     	    }

          String resultStr = "";
          for(int i = 0; i < count; i++)
          	{
          		 if(token[i].equalsIgnoreCase(searchText))
         	 	 	{
         	 	 		resultStr = resultStr.replaceAll(token[i],replacementText);
        	  		}
        	  	 else
        	  	 	{
        	  	 		resultStr += token[i] + ", ";
        	  		}
      	    }
        	 
          resultStr = resultStr.substring(0, resultStr.trim().length() - 1);
          return resultStr.toString();
	}

public String replace(String document, String searchText, String replacementText)
	{
          String [] token = new String[10];

          StringTokenizer sTokens = new StringTokenizer(document, ",");

          int count = 0;
          while(sTokens.hasMoreTokens()) 
          	{
      		  	token[count++] = sTokens.nextToken().trim();
     	    }

          String resultStr = "";
          for(int i = 0; i < count; i++)
          	{
          		 if(token[i].equalsIgnoreCase(searchText))
         	 	 	{
         	 	 		resultStr = resultStr.replaceAll(token[i],replacementText);
        	  		}
        	  	 else
        	  	 	{
        	  	 		resultStr += token[i] + ", ";
        	  		}
      	    }
        	 
          resultStr = resultStr.substring(0, resultStr.trim().length() - 1);
          return resultStr.toString();
	}

}

[Dillinger4]

Posted by ddmeightball

since I am using strings, should I use the replaceAll() method?

Yes use the replaceAll(String regex, String replacement) method. replace(char oldChar, char newChar) is just used if you want to replace
a character with another.

public class ReplaceEx{
  public static void main(String[] args){
   String s = "Hello my name is bill"; 
   String s2 = s.replaceAll("bill", "Jim");
   System.out.println(s);
   System.out.println(s2);
  }
}

[CornedBee]

Java 1.5 has a replace(CharSequence, CharSequence) which I would recommend over replaceAll, because it is faster.

[Dillinger4]

replace(CharSequence target, CharSequence replacement)
Replaces each substring of this string that matches the literal target sequence with the specified literal replacement sequence.

replaceAll(String regex, String replacement)
Replaces each substring of this string that matches the given regular expression with the given replacement.

Aren't they the same?

[CornedBee]

The latter uses regular expression matching, which allows advanced features, but consequently is far slower than the plain-text matching of the former. Also, you don't have to worry about escaping characters in the former.