What's the correct regex for a plus character (+) as the first argument (i.e. the string to replace) to Java's replaceAll method in the String class? I can't get the syntax right.
How to replace a plus character using Java's String.replaceAll method
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8 Answers
You need to escape the + for the regular expression, using \.
However, Java uses a String parameter to construct regular expressions, which uses \ for its own escape sequences. So you have to escape the \ itself:
"\\+"
when in doubt, let java do the work for you:
myStr.replaceAll(Pattern.quote("+"), replaceStr);
You'll need to escape the + with a \ and because \ is itself a special character in Java strings you'll need to escape it with another \.
So your regex string will be defined as "\\+" in Java code.
I.e. this example:
String test = "ABCD+EFGH";
test = test.replaceAll("\\+", "-");
System.out.println(test);
If you want a simple string find-and-replace (i.e. you don't need regex), it may be simpler to use the StringUtils from Apache Commons, which would allow you to write:
mystr = StringUtils.replace(mystr, "+", "plus");
How about replacing multiple ‘+’ with an undefined amount of repeats?
Example: test+test+test+1234
(+) or [+] seem to pick on a single literal character but on repeats.
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