My goal is to replace a certain substring within a string that doesn't alter those that aren't strictly that substring. It is slightly confusing to write down so let me show you with an example.
Say I have the string
"StackOverflow Stack Overflow Stacks"
Now I would like to replace "Stack", if I am to use
x.replaceAll("Stack", "")
I will get
"Overflow Overflow s"
which is not desired, instead I would like the following:
"StackOverflow Overflow Stacks"
Use word boundaries:
\\bStack\\b
Your requirement is not entirely clear.
You need to think about the conditions for "Stack" to be replaced.
A good example would be a word boundary: x.replaceAll("\\bStack\\b", "")
This will ensure that "Stack" surrounded by non-word characters will be replaced, while other instances of "Stack" will be left untouched.
You may want to be more specific and only replace when surrounded by whitespace:
x.replaceAll("(?<=\\s)Stack(?=\\s)", "") // replaces only "Stack"x.replaceAll("\\sStack\\s", "") // also gets rid of the surrounding whitespaceEtc...
You can use word boundaries to accomplish this:
use the below code for the same:
String abc = "StackOverflow Stack Overflow Stacks";
abc = abc.replaceAll("\\bStack\\b", "");
System.out.println(abc);
The result is printed as StackOverflow Overflow Stacks
