Question

I’m not sure if this is a regex question, but i need to be able to grab whats inside single qoutes, and surround them with something. For example:

this is a 'test' of 'something' and 'I' 'really' want 'to' 'solve this'

would turn into

this is a ('test') of ('something') and ('I') ('really') want ('to') ('solve this')

Any help you could provide would be great!

Thanks!

Answer 1

String str = "this is a 'test' of 'something'";
String rep = str.replaceAll("'[^']*'", "($0)"); // stand back, I know regex

What I did here is use toe replaceAll() method which searches for all matches for regex "'[^']*'" and replaces them with regex "($0)".

The pattern "'[^']*'" matches all substrings that start and end with a single quote ('), and between them are any characters, except another single quote ([^']), and those can appear any number of times (*). Replacing those with "($0)" means taking every match ($0) and wrapping it with parenthesis.