Remove a random expression from string

Question

I have a string/column something like this

String a = \"000003023_AggregateStopLossLimit_W x3A 973911_2012-12-22.PDF\";

I want to create a subs

Answer 1

replaceAll takes a regex as an argument, if the substring contains regex markers (such as [, + for example) you will get an unexpected behaviour.

You can use replace instead which does the same thing but takes a string as a parameter.

Apart from that, if you know that you will have a space and a _ as delimiters, AND the substring in between does not occur elsewhere, then your approach looks fine. You could possibly make it slightly more readable with intermediate variables:

int start = a.indexOf(" ");
int end = a.indexOf("_", start);
String b = a.substring(0, start) + a.substring(end, a.length());