What is RegExUtils.replacePattern() in Java?
Overview
replacePattern() is a static method of the RegExUtils class. It is used to replace all the substrings in the given string that matches the specified regular expression with the DOTALL mode enabled. It will replace the substrings with a specified replacement string.
RegExUtils is defined in the Apache Commons Lang package. To add Apache Commons Lang to the Maven project, add the following dependency to pom.xml file.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
<version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>
For other versions of the commons-lang package, refer to the Maven Repository.
RegExUtils class can be imported as follows:
import org.apache.commons.lang3.RegExUtils;
Syntax
public static String replacePattern(final String text, final String regex, final String replacement)
Parameters
final String text: The string on which the regex is applied.final Pattern regex: Regular expression.final String replacement: Replacement string.
Return value
The method returns modified text after replacing the substrings with the replacement string that match the regex with the DOTALL mode enabled.
Example
In the code below, we define the text to be a snippet of HTML code with a div tag that has text within it. We use the replacePattern method to replace the tag as well as the text with new lines within it with edpresso.
Output
The output of the code when is executed is as follows:
Welcome edpresso End
import org.apache.commons.lang3.RegExUtils;public class Main {public static void main(String[] args){String text = "Welcome <div>\nhello\nthis is educative.io\nhome to learning</div> End";String pattern = "<.*>";String replacementString = "edpresso";System.out.println(RegExUtils.replacePattern(text, pattern, replacementString));}}