I have String from which I need to extract a keyword.
Something like: "I have 100 friends and 1 evil".
I need to extract "100" from that String using only replaceAll function and appropriate regex.
I tried to do it in that way:
String input = "I have 100 friends and 1 evil";
String result = input.replaceAll("[^\\d{3}]", "")
But it doesn't work. Any help would be appreciated.
You can consider any of the solutions below:
String result = input.replaceFirst(".*?(\\d{3}).*", "$1");
String result = input.replaceFirst(".*?(?<!\\d)(\\d{3})(?!\\d).*", "$1");
String result = input.replaceFirst(".*?\\b(\\d{3})\\b.*", "$1");
String result = input.replaceFirst(".*?(?<!\\S)(\\d{3})(?!\\S).*", "$1");
See the regex demo. NOTE you may use replaceAll here, too, but it makes little sense as the replacement must occur only once in this case.
Here,
.*? - matches any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as few as possible(\d{3}) - captures into Group 1 any three digits.* - matches any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as many as possible.The (?<!\d) / (?!\d) lookarounds are digit boundaries, there is no match if the sequence is four or more digits. \b are word boundaries, there will be no match of the three digits are glued to a letter, digit or underscore. (?<!\S) / (?!\S) lookarounds are whitespace boundaries, there must be a space or start of string before the match and either a space or end of string after.
The replacement is $1, the value of Group 1.
See the Java demo:
String input = "I have 100 friends and 1 evil";
System.out.println(input.replaceFirst(".*?(\\d{3}).*", "$1"));
System.out.println(input.replaceFirst(".*?(?<!\\d)(\\d{3})(?!\\d).*", "$1"));
System.out.println(input.replaceFirst(".*?\\b(\\d{3})\\b.*", "$1"));
System.out.println(input.replaceFirst(".*?(?<!\\S)(\\d{3})(?!\\S).*", "$1"));
All output 100.