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javaregexstringpunctuation

Regex that get rid of all the punctuations at the top and the end of a string

I am trying to come up with a regular expression that gets rid of all the punctuations(if there is one or more) both at the top and the end of a string. The regex I am using now looks like this:(word is the string I want to convert)

    word = word.replaceAll("['?:!.,;]*([a-z]+)['?:!.,;]*", "$1").toLowerCase();

However, I still get some weird cases. For example, 'Amen' goes to 'amen' and ''tis goes to 'tis. Can anyone help me modify it so that 'Amen' will go to amen and ''tis to tis. Thanks in advance!

Solution

  • Replace the following pattern:

    ^\p{P}+|\p{P}+$

    With an empty string.

    Demo

    \p{P} means any punctuation character. The first part of the regex will remove punctuation at the start, and the second will do it at the end.