How to repeatedly replace different strings with most chars are Not unique?

Question

NOTE: I'm trying to avoid to do a substring of a substring of a ... replacement.
Hello there,
I'm looking for solution on a best approach to do a string replacment in something like example below.
The idea would be to:
1. Open a file and Find a "Title" (i.e. TC162-01.2GFC (after <td colspan=6>)). The Title here will be a dynamic and can be changed from one run to another.
2. If it match to expected value then do a replacement of data between <select... and </select> for another values.
3. Keep going for each block of <tr> ... </tr>
=======================================
<tr>
<td colspan=1>1</td>
<td colspan=1>TC1.1</td>
<td colspan=6>TC162-01.2GFC</td>
<td colspan=2>Unknown</td>
<td colspan=1><select name="res_1_0_20789_21522" size=1>
<option>PASS</option><option>FAIL</option><option selected>No Status</option></select> </td>
<td colspan=1><input type=text maxlength='30' size='10' name='comment_1' value=''></td></tr>
<tr>
<td colspan=1>2</td>
<td colspan=1>TC1.2</td>
<td colspan=6>TC162-01.3ABC</td>
<td colspan=2>Unknown</td>
<td colspan=1><select name="res_2_0_20790_21523" size=1>
<option selected>PASS</option><option>FAIL</option><option>No Status</option></select> </td>
<td colspan=1><input type=text maxlength='30' size='10' name='comment_2' value=''></td></tr>
=======================================

Answer 1

Here's a simple and conceptual example. You could use your real implementation of the getReplace() method.
/** file: test-vlad.txt *************************************
<tr>
<td colspan=1>1</td>
<td colspan=1>TC1.1</td>
<td colspan=6>TC162-01.2GFC</td>
<td colspan=2>Unknown</td>
<td colspan=1><select name="res_1_0_20789_21522" size=1>
<option>PASS</option><option>FAIL</option><option selected>No Status</option></select> </td>
<td colspan=1><input type=text maxlength='30' size='10' name='comment_1' value=''></td></tr>
<tr>
<td colspan=1>2</td>
<td colspan=1>TC1.2</td>
<td colspan=6>TC162-01.3ABC</td>
<td colspan=2>Unknown</td>
<td colspan=1><select name="res_2_0_20790_21523" size=1>
<option selected>PASS</option><option>FAIL</option><option>No Status</option></select> </td>
<td colspan=1><input type=text maxlength='30' size='10' name='comment_2' value=''></td></tr>
import java.util.regex.*;
import java.io.*;
public class Vlad{
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
    BufferedReader br;
    StringBuffer sb;
    String line, fcontent;
    sb = new StringBuffer();
    br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("test-vlad.txt"));
    while ((line = br.readLine()) != null){
      sb.append(line + "\n");
    fcontent = sb.toString();
    String regex
     = "<td colspan=6>([^<]+)(</td>.+?<select[^>]+>)(.+?)</select>";
    Pattern pat = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.DOTALL);
    Matcher mat = pat.matcher(fcontent);
    StringBuffer rsb = new StringBuffer();
    while (mat.find()){
      String title = mat.group(1);
      String value = mat.group(3);
      String newValue = getReplace(title, value);
      mat.appendReplacement
        (rsb, "<td colspan=6>" + title + "$2" + newValue + "</select>");
    mat.appendTail(rsb);
    System.out.println(rsb.toString());
  } // end main()
  // a dummy implementation
  static String getReplace(String tdTitle, String selectValue){
    return "###ANOTHER VALUES###";
}Edited by: hiwa on Dec 11, 2007 11:14 AM