Occurrences of substring in a string

Question

Why is the following algorithm not halting for me? (str is the string I am searching in, findStr is the string I am trying to find)

String str = \"helloslkhe         


        

Answer 1

Try this one. It replaces all the matches with a -.

String str = "helloslkhellodjladfjhello";
String findStr = "hello";
int numberOfMatches = 0;
while (str.contains(findStr)){
    str = str.replaceFirst(findStr, "-");
    numberOfMatches++;
}

And if you don't want to destroy your str you can create a new string with the same content:

String str = "helloslkhellodjladfjhello";
String strDestroy = str;
String findStr = "hello";
int numberOfMatches = 0;
while (strDestroy.contains(findStr)){
    strDestroy = strDestroy.replaceFirst(findStr, "-");
    numberOfMatches++;
}

After executing this block these will be your values:

str = "helloslkhellodjladfjhello"
strDestroy = "-slk-djladfj-"
findStr = "hello"
numberOfMatches = 3