Question

Is it possible to make String.replaceAll put the number (count) of the current replacement into the replacement being made?

So that "qqq".replaceAll("(q)", "something:$1 ") would result in "1:q 2:q 3:q"?

Is there anything that I can replace something in the code above with, to make it resolve into the current substitution count?

Answer 1

Here is one way of doing this:

StringBuffer resultString = new StringBuffer();
String subjectString = new String("qqqq");
Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("q");
Matcher regexMatcher = regex.matcher(subjectString);
int i = 1;
while (regexMatcher.find()) {
   regexMatcher.appendReplacement(resultString, i+":"+regexMatcher.group(1)+" ");
   i++;
}
regexMatcher.appendTail(resultString);
System.out.println(resultString);

See it