Is it possible to invert a call to String's replaceAll method?

Question

For example...

String s = "abcxyzabcxyz";
s.replaceAll("xyz", "---");

This would normally give me "abc---abc---". How would I get it to give me "---xyz---xyz" instead?

Answer 1

String#replaceAll accepts a regex, if I understood you correctly, you can use:

s.replaceAll("[^xyz]", "---")

Explanation:

[^xyz] means any character that's not one of "x", "y" or "z".

In order to negate "xyz" as a series, use:

^(?!.*xyz).*$