Selection problem in JTextArea

Question

hi all
i have a TextArea in which i have some coded charecters in a group of ten charactes i treet these ten characters as a single character ,so when i delete or insert these charactes all these charactes r deleted and no other character r inserted in between , i do it with the caretListener,
But the problem which i face is on the selection i want to select these characters as when we select some part of the URL then it is selected completely.
help in the prob.

Answer 1

this might work
paste some text into the textArea (ensure it contains a sequence "12345")
click anywhere in area of 12345
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
class Testing extends JFrame
  String specialChars = "12345";
  boolean settingCaret = false;
  public Testing()
    setSize(200,200);
    setLocation(300,200);
    setDefaultCloseOperation(EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    final JTextArea ta = new JTextArea(10,10);
    JScrollPane sp = new JScrollPane(ta);
    sp.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(175,150));
    JPanel jp = new JPanel();
    jp.add(sp);
    getContentPane().add(jp);
    pack();
    ta.addCaretListener(new CaretListener(){
      public void caretUpdate(CaretEvent ce){
        if(settingCaret == false)
          int startPos = ta.getText().indexOf(specialChars);
          if(startPos > -1)
            if(ta.getCaretPosition() >= startPos && ta.getCaretPosition() <= startPos+specialChars.length())
              settingCaret = true;
              ta.setSelectionStart(startPos);
              ta.setSelectionEnd(startPos+specialChars.length());
            settingCaret = false;
  public static void main(String[] args){new Testing().setVisible(true);}
}