using replace() in a text file for changing words - not char sequences

akenaton

i have a text file. I want to change some words. I thought it was easy to do using replace(). Which works but too much, i mean that it changes all occurences of char sequence, and sometimes changes words sometimes changes only char sequence into a word. In order to be much clear see the example (i want to change only the word "pur")===

String s;

void setup(){
    size(400,200);
    background(0);
    fill(255);
    textSize(24);

    s= "pur pureté purify";
    String dep = "pur";
    s = s.replace(dep, "kleen"); 
    text(s, 100,100);
    ///displays: kleen kleeneté, kleenify.....
}

Solution (as for me!!!) could be to test wether next char is ' ' but i don't see how to do that in a simple way, knowing that the the real text file is 100 pages long. Another one to write String dep = "pur " instead of "pur", but with the real text this changes the whole textAlign, + it works only if the word is the first one. Another solution:: to make an arrayList, then get && remove the old word, then add the new one, then transform my array in a string.... and it probably works but seems really stupid!!!

Any idea??? thanks in advance

benja

you can use regular expressions for such tasks. In your case this could be something like this:

String original= "pur pureté pur. purify pur, purify.";
String expression = "pur([:;., ])";
String out = original.replaceAll(expression, "kleen$1");

println(out);

that would replace all occurences of "pur" that are followed by a space or one of these chracters: :;.,.

Chrisir

and

? ! ) ] } 

benja

I forgot about \b
You can search for word-boundaries directly like this:

String expression = "\\bpur\\b";

The first example was wrong anyways, because it would still affect words like "impur".

akenaton

@benja::: your second answer works:: looking for word-boundaries...Thanks!