String.replaceAll doesn't work

Question

Hi,
I hope this is the correct forum to post about this problem. It's not a compiler error, it rather seems to be an interpreter or a logical error.
Please consider this test program I wrote to clarify the problem.
public class Test {
    public static void main( String args[]) {
     String someString = "Hello $place!";
     System.out.println( someString.replaceAll( "place", "world"));
     System.out.println( someString.replaceAll( "$place", "world"));
}The method String.replaceAll should replace all occurences of regex with replacement.
Also see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#replaceAll(java.lang.String, java.lang.String)
So, one should think my test program would have the following output:
Hello $world!
Hello world!Alas, it isn't so. The program outputs the following using SDK 1.2.4:
Hello $world!
Hello $place!The String.replaceAll method doesn't seem to replace occurences if they are preceeded of "$". Or am I just missing something?

Answer 1

The String.replaceAll method doesn't seem to replace
occurences if they are preceeded of "$". Or am I just
missing something?You're right. The method replaceAll is expecting a [url http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html]regular expression. See there how to escape special control chars like $ which means 'end of line'.