Java: replaceAll doesn't work well with backslash?

Question

I\'m trying to replace the beginning of a string with backslashes to something else. For some weird reason the replaceAll function doesn\'t like backslashes.

Str         


        

Answer 1

replaceAll expects a regular expression as its input string, which is then matched and replaced in every instance. A backslash is a special escape character in regular expressions, and in order to match it you need another backslash to escape it. So, to match a string with "\", you need a regular expression with '"\"`.

To match the string "\\\\xyz\\abc" you need the regular expression "\\\\\\\\xyz\\\\abc" (note an extra \ for each source \):

String jarPath = "\\\\xyz\\abc\\wtf\\lame\\";
jarPath = jarPath.replaceAll("\\\\\\\\xyz\\\\abc", "z:");