Using RegEx to Strip Last Character from a String Conditionally

[Steve Dyke]

If the part number has an appended suffix preceeded by a space, strip the last character off.
If there is no preceeding space leave the lase character. Example: 41131001-299-101-AS

My question is can this be reduced(hopefully to a single line) using regex somehow?

String partno = 41131001-299  S
String plannerSuffix = partno.substring(partno.length() -2);
if(plannerSuffix.startsWith(" ")) {
	partno = partno.substring(0, partno.length() -1));
}

[Carey Brown]

public class StringReplace
{
	public static void main( String[] args )
	{
		System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299  S" ) );
		System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299-101-AS" ) );
	}

	public static String trimPartNo( String s )
	{
		return s.replaceFirst( " +.$", "" );
	}
}

[Steve Dyke]

I need it to return this:

System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299" ) );//Take out the "S"
System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299-101-AS" ) );

[Campbell Ritchie]

What's wrong with substring()?

[Carey Brown]

Steve Dyke wrote:I need it to return this:

System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299" ) );//Take out the "S"
System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299-101-AS" ) );

Do you mean, leave the spaces preceding the 'S' but remove only the 'S'?

[Carey Brown]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:What's wrong with substring()?

It's not conditional.

[Carey Brown]

Carey Brown wrote:

public class StringReplace
{
	public static void main( String[] args )
	{
		System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299  S" ) ); // *** The output has no 'S'
		System.out.println( trimPartNo( "41131001-299-101-AS" ) );
	}

	public static String trimPartNo( String s )
	{
		return s.replaceFirst( " +.$", "" );
	}
}

[Steve Dyke]

Carey Brown wrote:
Do you mean, leave the spaces preceding the 'S' but remove only the 'S'?

Yes. Or remove spaces and "S".
Any character in the string that has a preceding space, I need to remove it.
Reason, the suffix is not a part of the Customer Part Number.
It is used internally within our ERP system to define certain attributes like routing process.
However, when the part number is referenced on any document going back to the Customer the suffix needs to be removed.

[Carey Brown]

Steve Dyke wrote:Any character in the string that has a preceding space, I need to remove it.

replaceAll( " [^ ]", "" )

Remove all instances of a space followed by a non-space.

[Steve Dyke]

Sorry.

I was doing this:

partno.trim().replaceAll(" +.$", "" );
System.out.println("NamePlateAssignmentDataRepository: BlueTagPreCompileString: " + partno);

Instead of this:

partno = partno.trim().replaceAll(" +.$", "" );
System.out.println("NamePlateAssignmentDataRepository: BlueTagPreCompileString: " + partno);

[Carey Brown]

Steve Dyke wrote:Sorry.
I was doing this:

partno.trim().replaceAll(" +.$", "" );
System.out.println("NamePlateAssignmentDataRepository: BlueTagPreCompileString: " + partno);

Instead of this:

partno = partno.trim().replaceAll(" +.$", "" );
System.out.println("NamePlateAssignmentDataRepository: BlueTagPreCompileString: " + partno);

"replaceAll()" conflicts with the "$" meta-character which means match at end of string.

[Steve Dyke]

S/B replaceFirst...