Question

I am searching for the following text in an input string: +Bob

If the program finds +Bob, I want it to remove the + before Bob

However, I do not want the program to eliminate all +‘s, just +‘s before or after Bob, with or without intervening whitespace. So a string for example of: + Bob still counts as +Bob.

Answer 1

String str = "+Bob foo + bar";
str = str.replace("+Bob", "Bob");
System.out.println(str);

Bob foo + bar

To handle a space between + and Bob you can use regular expressions:

String str = "+Bob foo + bar";
str = str.replaceAll("\\+\\s*Bob", "Bob");

To check for a plus afterwards, use

str = str.replaceAll("Bob\\s*\\+", "Bob");