replaceAll not working

[Nee Kat]

I am trying to replace "&" with "&" but it is not working. Here is the code.

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class searchReplaceMethod
{
public static void main ( String args[])

{
String tobsearched = "AT&T Bell Laboratories";

tobsearched.replaceAll("&","&");

System.out.println(tobsearched);

}
}

Please help.
Thanks,
Nee
[ March 07, 2005: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Paul Sturrock]

Hmm. Replacing "&" with "&" - that's not going to visably change the String. Are you sure you want to do this?

[Ray Stojonic]

Am I missing something?

How are you determining that it doesn't work?

[Hentay Duke]

First off, like everyone else is asking, "How do you know it's not working?". But more importantly this line is not going to do what you want

 tobsearched.replaceAll("&","&"); 

You should be assigning it to a new String like so.

String tobsearched2 = tobsearched.replaceAll("&","@");  

then print out the new String.

Of course that won't look like it works either if you insist on replacing "&" with "&". Instead try replacing "&" with "@"!

[Carol Enderlin]

Assuming you were replacing & with something you could recognize as changed...

You are not saving the changed String that replaceAll returns. Instead you are printing out the original String.

Try this:

 
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
 
public class searchReplaceMethod
{
    public static void main ( String args[])
    {
        String tobsearched = "AT&T Bell Laboratories";
        String newString = tobsearched.replaceAll("&"," And ");
 
        System.out.println(tobsearched + " : " + newString);
    }
}
 
C:\_Work\java\src>java searchReplaceMethod
AT&T Bell Laboratories : AT And T Bell Laboratories
  

[Jim Yingst]

I have edited the original post in this thread to reflect what Nee Kat meant to say, instead of what everyone's browser displayed. The basic problem is: the original post was intended to say

I am trying to replace "&" with "&"

but when you type & in a post here, the browser will render it as simply &. So the original post came out as

I am trying to replace "&" with "&"

which is why all the subsequent posters were confused. If you want to get & to display here, you need to escape the original & with an entity - which means you need to type "&" instead of "&". It's confusing, I know - but necessary. Remember that you can edit your own posts after you post them, using the little pencil-and-paper icon. So if you get it wrong, you can always fix it later.

I have edited the original post to make it more clear, but I haven't touched the subsequent posts, since I wasn't sure how to make them consistent with the new version of the first post. But everyone should be aware that the previous posts were responding to a different version of the original post - that's why they don't seem to make sense now.

Hentay and Carol have identified the real problem though - replaceAll() doesn't change the original string, it creates a new one. So you need to save that new string in a variable.

[Nee Kat]

Thanks,

I got it.

Nee