Java replaceAll with regex

Question

I have this input from the user:

*.*.*.*

(* = censor) this string is an input from the user, that's what the user wants to censor. how do I convert it to regex? Edit: Let me explain again. user wants to censor anything in * between the dots, so he types in *.*.*.*, and I need to convert it to regex. he could type text*text too

I have tried doing:

String strLine = "93.38.31.43 and 39.53.19.33 and lala.lala.lala.lala";
String input = "*.*.*.*";
String replaceWord = "[censor]";
input = input.replaceAll("\\*","\\\\\\w+");
strLine = strLine.replaceAll("(?=\\s+)\\S*)" + input + "(?=\\s+)\\S*",replaceWord);

I tried replacing the * with \\w+ to get this output:

the ip's are [censor] and [censor] and [censor]

but It does not work, doesn't replace anything.

when I'm doing it like that, it works:

strLine = strLine.replaceAll("?<=\\s+)\\S*" +"\\w+\\.\\w+\\.\\w+\\.\\w+"+"(?\\s+)\\S*",replaceWord);

why doesn't it work? is there a better way doing it?

Answer 1

You can use:

String strLine = "93.38.31.43 and 39.53.19.33 and lala.lala.lala.lala";
String input = "*.*.*.*";
String replaceWord = "[censor]";

input = input.replace("*","\\w+").replace(".", "\\.");
System.out.println(input); // \w+\.\w+\.\w+\.\w+

strLine = strLine.replaceAll("\\b" + input + "\\b", replaceWord);
System.out.println(strLine);
//=> [censor] and [censor] and [censor]