string regex question

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Marc E - 28 Apr 2007 00:01 GMT

is there a way to do regex backreference replacement with the String class
without Pattern and Matcher? for example, I'd like to do something like
this:
String somebigstring = "blahblahblah<hooey>and some stuff here</hooey> and
some other stuff";
String mystring = somebigstring.replace("(.*)<hooey>(*.)</hooey","\2");

such that mystring is then the stuff between the hooey tags.

just seems to me that the 4-5 lines of pattern/matcher code i have to write
to achieve this is way overkill and so i have to believe there's a much
simpler way to do it with String, but i can't get backreferences to work in
replacements. probably missign something stupid, but i can't find it.

thanks a lot.

Marc

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SadRed - 28 Apr 2007 00:47 GMT

> is there a way to do regex backreference replacement with the String class
> without Pattern and Matcher? for example, I'd like to do something like
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
>
> Marc

public class MarcE{

public static void main(String[] args){
String somebigstring =
"blahblahblah<hooey>and some stuff here</hooey> and some other
stuff";

String mystring = somebigstring.substring
(somebigstring.indexOf("<hooey>") +"<hooey>".length(),
somebigstring.indexOf("</hooey>"));

String mystring2 = somebigstring.replaceAll
("^(.*?)<hooey>(.*?)</hooey>(.*?)$", "$2");

System.out.println(mystring);
System.out.println(mystring2);
}
}

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Marc E - 28 Apr 2007 03:37 GMT

ahhhh, the dollar signs. i was using backslashes like you do with matcher.

thanks a million SadRed.

>> is there a way to do regex backreference replacement with the String
>> class
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
> }
> }

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string regex question

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