Question

I have a path called $SERVER/public_html/ab1/ab2/.

I want to change it so that instead of $SERVER it just replaces it with my user directory. So I do

path = path.replaceFirst("\\$SERVER", System.getProperty("user.dir"));

but when I run it, it removes my \ in the new string.

F:Programming ProjectsJava Project/public_html/ab1/ab2/

Answer 1

Pattern has a String quote(String) function that will help you for the first string and Matcher has String quoteReplacement(String) for the second:

path = path.replaceFirst(java.util.regex.Pattern.quote("$SERVER"), java.util.regex.Matcher.quoteReplacement(System.getProperty("user.dir")));

edit: the reason you have to escape anything is because the second string has the semantics of Matcher.appendReplacement which treats backslashes and dollars as escape next char and insert captured group resp.

from the doc:

Note that backslashes () and dollar
signs ($) in the replacement string
may cause the results to be different
than if it were being treated as a
literal replacement string. Dollar
signs may be treated as references to
captured subsequences as described
above, and backslashes are used to
escape literal characters in the
replacement string.

a more obvious solution is (be careful of the needed escaped with that backslash)

 path = path.replaceFirst("\\$SERVER", System.getProperty("user.dir").replaceAll("\\\\","\\\\\\\\"));