even more about deleting the first word in a string
hi, i have this code that removes the first word in a string, returns the shorter string, removes the first word from the shorter string aso... what i would like it to do is to stop when it hits a non-character, but i can't get it to do that. does anyone know why \b won't work?
import java.io.*;
class Testar{
publicstaticvoid main(String[] args){
String partDesc ="Hi my name is SandraPandra.";
while (partDesc.equals("\b") ==false){//this is where something goes wrong
System.out.println(partDesc);
partDesc = partDesc.replaceFirst("^(\\w+)\\s+","");
}
}
}
thanx in advance!
I'd use substring(String,int,int) and indexOf(char) methods!From your code the program will stop only when partDesc = "\b" meaning that if the last "word" in your string is "\b" it will stop!Easier is to use indexOf("\b") and get the substring after it!
pSala at 2007-7-12 9:55:38 >
I believe that this
partDesc = partDesc.replaceFirst("^(\\w+)\\s+", "");
will replace any first word that has whitespace after it, so it won't replace the last word w/ the period and your routine will go on and on. I'm not sure I understand what is the final result you wish to obtain.
while (partDesc.equals("\b") == false)
That compares partDesc to a string consisting of one backspace character. I suspect you're trying to use the regex word-boundary anchor, but that's a dead end. If you want to stop beheading the string when the regex stops matching, you can write the code exactly that way: class Testar {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String partDesc = "Hi my name is SandraPandra.";
while ( partDesc.matches("^(\\w+)\\s+.*") ) {
partDesc = partDesc.replaceFirst("^(\\w+)\\s+","");
System.out.println(partDesc);
}
}
}
If performance is a concern, you can use a pre-compiled Pattern object for greater efficiency. Thanks to Matcher's lookingAt() method, you can use the same regex for the test and the replacement: class Testar {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String partDesc = "Hi my name is SandraPandra.";
Pattern p = Pattern p = Pattern.compile("^(\\w+)\\s+");
Matcher m = p.matcher(partDesc);
while ( m.lookingAt() ) {
partDesc = m.replaceFirst("");
System.out.println(partDesc);
m.reset(partDesc);
}
}
}
The ^ anchor isn't really necessary in this version, since lookingAt() implicitly anchors the match to the beginning of the string, but you might as well leave it in.
