how do i remove first and last occurrence of the sentence in java

Question

I have a following line : |A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11| and I want to remove the first and last occurrence of |.

I have to check first if the | is available at first and last

I am sure that this will bring me some down votes but really don't know how to go about.

EDIT

I also have to check for the following :

A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11| and |A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11 and there is no

possibilities for || that is why I did not want to give any explanation for the same.

thanks for your valuable time.

Duplicate of this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2088037/trim-characters-in-java — justhalf, Sep 30 '13 at 07:32
@justhalf this is not duplicate of what you have provided :) — Java Questions, Sep 30 '13 at 07:33
You want to remove the first and last `|`, if they are available as the first and last characters, right? — justhalf, Sep 30 '13 at 07:34
Probably you can give more example. What is your expected output on this: `AB|CD|EF|`? — justhalf, Sep 30 '13 at 07:34
Do you want to remove the first occurrence of `|` or simply remove the first character? do you want a sentence like `AB|BC|` changed to ABBC? — Aneesh, Sep 30 '13 at 07:34
@BalajiD: But he also mentioned "check if `|` is available at first and last", which is confusing. — justhalf, Sep 30 '13 at 07:35
@Anto Why did you tag this question with regex, if you do not require a regex solution? — Scary Wombat, Sep 30 '13 at 07:35
@balajiD : it is confusing. Does he want to remove `|` if it is the first character in a sentence or does he want to remove the first occurence of `|` — Aneesh, Sep 30 '13 at 07:36
All, I want to remove `|` if it is the first one and if available in the last one also — Java Questions, Sep 30 '13 at 07:38
@Anto: You should edit your question to include your expected output for these cases: `|AB|BC|CD|`, `|AB|CD|EF`, and `||AB|CD|EF|` — justhalf, Sep 30 '13 at 07:50

Jerry · Answer 1 · 2013-09-30T08:01:17.087

6

You can perhaps use the regex:

^\\|(.*)\\|$

And replace by $1:

ideone demo

If the start and end of the string are not both |, there'll be no replacement.

EDIT: As per your last comment, if you want to remove the | if it's either at the start and/or at the end of the string, then use an OR operator (there's too many | in that question I think =P):

^\\||\\|$

Replace by nothing (empty string "")

EDIT2:

If the first regex is closer to what you need but also want to remove multiple pipes, add quantifiers:

^\\|+(.*)\\|+$

If the second regex (in first edit) is what you need but also want to remove multiple pipes, add quantifiers again!

^\\|+|\\|+$

Note that the replacement strings remain the same in both cases

edited Sep 30 '13 at 08:01

answered Sep 30 '13 at 07:35

Jerry

70,495
13
100
144

1

According to the comments, it's possible that only one side of the string is a `|`, and that should be removed. – Tim Pietzcker Sep 30 '13 at 07:49
@TimPietzcker Yes, I saw it just a while ago... The question wasn't well formulated after all :( – Jerry Sep 30 '13 at 07:51
According to his comments "if | is not available at first and last than what will happen if I use your code?" and his question "I have to check first if the | is available at first and last" I think OP wants to remove the characters if they are present both at the beginning and at the end. – justhalf Sep 30 '13 at 07:51
@justhalf But in another one of his comments, OP has: "All, I want to remove | if it is the first one and **if** available in the last one also` And I only added one option, depending on what he's really looking for. He can pick the one he needs. – Jerry Sep 30 '13 at 07:55
Yes, the question is quite unclear. How if there are multiple pipes at the end like `|AB|CD|EF||`? – justhalf Sep 30 '13 at 07:57
@justhalf I can add yet another option for him to choose =P – Jerry Sep 30 '13 at 07:58
Haha, I hope he wants to convert `|AB|CD|EF||` into `AB|CD|EF`, for which `StringUtils.strip(input,"|")` would be very elegant, and that this question would be indeed a duplicate for http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2088037/trim-characters-in-java haha – justhalf Sep 30 '13 at 08:00
@Jerry the code is working if the `|` exist `first and last` and the code is not working for `A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11|` and `|A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11` – Java Questions Sep 30 '13 at 08:01
@justhalf Might be the case. Sometimes, we our mindreading powers aren't far reaching. – Jerry Sep 30 '13 at 08:02
@Anto Use the second regex I mentioned in my answer. Or use TimPietzcker's answer. – Jerry Sep 30 '13 at 08:13

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 30 '13 at 07:46

4

Your comments lead me to believe that you want to do this:

String result = subject.replaceAll("^\\||\\|$", "");

This will change each of the following strings:

|A|B|C|
|A|B|C
A|B|C|
A|B|C

to the same string A|B|C.

See it on regex101.com.

answered Sep 30 '13 at 07:46

Tim Pietzcker

328,213
58
503
561

kark · Answer 3 · 2013-09-30T07:45:02.770

3

Use indexOf() and lastIndexOf() from java.lang.String package

    String s="|A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11|";
    s=s.substring(s.indexOf("|"),s.lastIndexOf("|"));
    System.out.println(s);    //Prints A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11

edited Sep 30 '13 at 07:45

answered Sep 30 '13 at 07:29

kark

4,763
6
30
44

I thinks he wants a regex solution – Scary Wombat Sep 30 '13 at 07:30
he didn't mention, just he tagged – kark Sep 30 '13 at 07:30
@kark if `|` is not available at first and last than what will happen if I use your code? – Java Questions Sep 30 '13 at 07:41
1

put dot in between the variable and lastIndexOf – newuser Sep 30 '13 at 07:44
@anto ..this `s=s.substring(s.indexOf("|"),s.lastIndexOf("|"));` is for removing the first and last occurance of a line..As your point if first is not occur, will take from the next occurrance of same String – kark Sep 30 '13 at 07:47
1

This will also remove `|`s that aren't at the very start/end of the string. – Tim Pietzcker Sep 30 '13 at 07:50

newuser · Answer 4 · 2013-09-30T07:51:44.093

2

Try,

String input = "|A|B|C|D|100|E|GEN|smsplus|11|11|11|";
input = input.substring(1, input.length()-1);

or use StringUtils.removeStart, removeEnd

StringUtils.removeStart(input, "|");
StringUtils.removeEnd(input, "|");

or

StringUtils.strip(input, "|");

edited Sep 30 '13 at 07:51

answered Sep 30 '13 at 07:32

newuser

8,338
2
25
33

@newuser..do you know `|` where will occur in a line – kark Sep 30 '13 at 07:38
1

If you want to use StringUtils, you can use StringUtils.strip(input,"|") – justhalf Sep 30 '13 at 07:39
@kark the questioner gives the input string. for that only i did that – newuser Sep 30 '13 at 07:43
@newuser.fine..good one for this question..i accept the edited answer – kark Sep 30 '13 at 07:44
@newuser: You can use `StringUtils.strip(input,"|");`, you don't need to separate them into `stripStart` and `stripEnd` – justhalf Sep 30 '13 at 07:47
@justhalf I think `remove...` method just suits the requirement. `strip(...` somewhat differs on it. – Ravinder Reddy Sep 30 '13 at 07:49
@Anto: if you really want to remove `|` at the beginning OR at the end, then `StringUtils.strip(input, "|")` is the best. – justhalf Sep 30 '13 at 07:53

how do i remove first and last occurrence of the sentence in java

4 Answers4