I was doing some regexp work on one of my projects, when suddenly this well-known and hundred-of-times implemented code right from the javadoc, failed:

   StringBuffer result = new StringBuffer(text.length());
   while (includeMatcher.find()) {
      String includeFile = includeMatcher.group(1);
      String s = readTemplate(includeFile, area,topic,skins,false);
      includeMatcher.appendReplacement(result, s);
   }
   includeMatcher.appendTail(result);
   text = result.toString();


A java.lang.IllegalArgumentException was thrown.

Thanks to google, I found out what happened: There was a $ sign in the replacement string.
Now, of course this was mentioned in the Matcher javadoc but nowhere in the documentation is stated that an IllegalArgumentException will be thrown.

Just for the record: the solution I implemented was to insert the following line just before the appendReplacement call:


s=s.replaceAll("\\$","\\\\\\$")


Hope this post helps someone in the future.

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3 Comments

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Thank you! I had the same problem

Man! Thanks! You just saved me my deadline!

You rock, thanks so much for posting this! I suspected it was the '$' but this example saved me loads of testing time.

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This page contains a single entry by Soronthar published on December 29, 2007 6:38 PM.

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