Hi everyone,

I have very very little regex experience and I'm having big troubles with something I'm tryng to do.

In Java I have for example a string "this is a string posted by @stev and I need @stev be clickable"

What the regex should do is create a string like this :  "this is a string posted by <a href='stev'>@stev</a> and I need <a href='stev'>@stev</a> be clickable"

Anyone got any idea how to do this? I have no idea, so any help is very welcome!

Thanks!!

I don't know how I did it but I got it working. Also I have no idea what is happening.

Here's my code:

        String text = "Blabla @stev visit the website http://www.google.com";
        System.out.println(text);
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile("@([_a-zA-Z]+)");
        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(text.length());
        Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
        while (m.find()) {
            //String replacement = "<a href=\"http://link.html?user=$1\" target=\"_blank\">$0</a>";
            String replacement = "<a href=\"$1\">$0</a>";
            m.appendReplacement(sb, replacement);
        }
        m.appendTail(sb);
        text = sb.toString();
        System.out.println(text);

apparently you successfullly matched a target sring:

and then wrapped it in some text, arriving at the desired result:

"<a href=\"$1\">$0</a>";

where $1 is your matched string :

@stev