How to Replace dot (.) in a string in Java

Question

I have a String called persons.name

I want to replace the DOT . with /*/ i.e my output will be persons/*/name

I tried this code:

String a="\\*\\";
str=xpath.replaceAll("\\.", a);

I am getting StringIndexOutOfBoundsException.

How do I replace the dot?

Answer 1

You need two backslashes before the dot, one to escape the slash so it gets through, and the other to escape the dot so it becomes literal. Forward slashes and asterisk are treated literal.

str=xpath.replaceAll("\\.", "/*/");          //replaces a literal . with /*/

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#replaceAll(java.lang.String,%20java.lang.String)

Answer 2

If you want to replace a simple string and you don't need the abilities of regular expressions, you can just use replace, not replaceAll.

replace replaces each matching substring but does not interpret its argument as a regular expression.

str = xpath.replace(".", "/*/");

Answer 3

Use Apache Commons Lang:

String a= "\\*\\";
str = StringUtils.replace(xpath, ".", a);

or with standalone JDK:

String a = "\\*\\"; // or: String a = "/*/";
String replacement = Matcher.quoteReplacement(a);
String searchString = Pattern.quote(".");
String str = xpath.replaceAll(searchString, replacement);

Answer 4

return sentence.replaceAll("\s",".");