Java String ReplaceAll method giving illegal repetition error?

Question

I have a string and when I try to run the replaceAll method, I am getting this strange error:

String str = \"something { } , op\";
str = str.r         


        

Answer 1

Escape it:

str = str.replaceAll("\\{", "\n"); 

This is needed since the first argument to replaceAll() is a regular expression, and { has a special meaning in Java regular expressions (it's a repetition operator, hence the error message).