Question

I am getting a HTML string as a result of querying a remote XML feed. I use the result to set text to a TextView. The problem is that a string contains HTML comment tags which are not supported by the TextView element.

Now, I need a way to remove (substring) the resulting string by indicating the part which will be removed. I cannot work via start and end positions, but I have to use starting and ending string pattern (<!-- as starting and --> as ending).

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use regular express, e.g.

    String input = "<!-- \nto be removed -->hello <!-- to be removed-->world";
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("<!--.*?-->", Pattern.DOTALL | Pattern.UNICODE_CASE | Pattern.MULTILINE);
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    int lastIndex = 0;
    while (matcher.find()) {
        builder.append(input.substring(lastIndex, matcher.start()));
        lastIndex = matcher.end();
    }
    builder.append(input.substring(lastIndex));
    System.out.println(builder);