String replace in Java

Question

I currently have a string which contains the characters A, B and C for example the string looks like

"A some other random stuff B C"

the other random stuff doesn't contain A, B or C I want to replace the A, B & C with 'A', 'B' and 'C' respectively what's the best way to do that currently I'm doing:

String.replace("A", "'A'").replace("B", "'B'").replace("C", "'C'")

Answer 1

cletus' answer works fine if A, B and C are those exact single characters, but not if they could be longer strings and you just called them A, B and C for example purposes. If they are longer strings you need to do:

String input = "FOO some other random stuff BAR BAZ";
String output = input.replaceAll("FOO|BAR|BAZ", "'$0'");

You will also need to escape any special characters in FOO, BAR and BAZ so that they are not interpreted as special regular expression symbols.

Answer 2

Use a regular expression:

String input = "A some other random stuff B C";
String output = input.replaceAll("[ABC]", "'$0'");

Output:

'A' some other random stuff 'B' 'C'

Answer 3

Have a look at StringUtils from Apache Commons Lang and its various replace methods.