String.replaceAll() doesn't work on $

Question

I have a String that represents a dollar amount and am trying to use .replaceAll("$", "") on it to prepare it for use with parseDouble(). However, when I run my app I'm still getting a java.lang.NumberFormatException: Invalid double: "$100.00" so it seems that for whatever reason, replaceAll() isn't working. Can anyone suggest why?

Here's the block of code affected:

public String subtractCurrenciesToString(String value1, String value2){
    String stringValue1 = value1.replaceAll("$", "");
    String stringValue2 = value2.replaceAll("$", "");

    Double currency1 = Double.parseDouble(stringValue1);
    Double currency2 = Double.parseDouble(stringValue2);

    return MoneyFormat.format(currency1 - currency2);
}

NOTE: MoneyFormat is a NumberFormat object initialized with getCurrencyInstance().

For what it's worth if you are doing any calculations with your money values you really should not be using Double to store it. See Here for a great explanation why: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3730019/why-not-use-double-or-float-to-represent-currency — FoamyGuy, May 18 '13 at 02:36
Interesting read Foamy, thanks. Still, as long as I'm rounding before storing the data, it avoids the dangers of wildly divergent number errors. — Argus9, May 18 '13 at 04:33

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered May 18 '13 at 01:09

6

replaceAll accepts a regex. In regex, $ is an end-of-string anchor, so you have to escape it in order to use it literally as a dollar sign:

.replaceAll("\\$", "");

answered May 18 '13 at 01:09

Blender

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That makes sense, but I tried the correction you mentioned and I'm still getting the $ in my String when I parseDouble(). – Argus9 May 18 '13 at 05:14

String.replaceAll() doesn't work on $

1 Answers1