Question

I have a line with ^||^ as my delimiter, I am using

int charCount = line.replaceAll("[^" + fileSeperator + "]", "").length();  
if(fileSeperator.length()>1)
{  
    charCount=charCount/fileSeperator.length();
    System.out.println(charCount+"char count between");  
}

This does not work if i have a line that has stray | or ^ as it counts these as well. How can i modify the regex or any other suggestions?

Answer 1

If I understand correctly, what you’re really trying to do is count the number of times that ^||^ appears in your String.

If that’s the case, you can use:

Matcher m = Pattern.compile(Pattern.quote("^||^")).matcher(line);
int count = 0;
while ( m.find() ) 
    count++;

System.out.println(count + "char count between");

But you really don’t need the regex engine for this.

int startIndex = 0;
int count = 0;
while ( true ) {
    int newIndex = line.indexOf(fileDelimiter, startIndex);
    if ( newIndex == -1 ) {
        break;
    } else {
        startIndex = newIndex + 1;
        count++;
    }
}