Question

I want to catch a single quoted text , however escaped single quote (\’) shouldn’t be considered a delimiter,
for example:

This ‘wasn\’t the best’ day

shall return

• wasn’t the best

Thanks.

I’ve tried this:

    public static List<String> cropQuoted (String s) {

    Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\'[^']*\\'");
    Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
    ArrayList found = new ArrayList();
    while(m.find()){
        found.add(m.group().replaceAll("\'", ""));
        System.out.println(m.group().replaceAll("\'", ""));
    }
    return found;
}

but it fails to catch “\’best’days’to come”

Answer 1

(?<!\\\\)' means “every ' with no \ before it”

Using this we can create something like this (?<!\\\\)'.*?(?<!\\\\)'

Lets test it

    String s="This 'wasn\\'t the best' day. Another 't\\'es\\'t Test' t\\'est";
    System.out.println(s.replaceAll("(?<!\\\\)'.*?(?<!\\\\)'", "X"));
    //out -> This X day. Test X t\'est

Is that you are looking for?