JAVA String replaceAll hashtag contents

Question

I'm using the below code as a test for later when using the Twitter API.

When I fetch tweets from my stream and store them in mySQL, how do I remove the hashtags along with any trailing characters? (basically omitting everything inside the hashtag)

I am able to use replaceAll and pass the "#" and "," values and replace them with "". It works and the output is below the code, but how would I use to replaceAll of the contents of the hashtag including the "not" "#not"?

public class replaceAllTest {
    public static void main (String args[]){
        String sampleString = "This game was amazing, #not";

        System.out.println("Before: " + sampleString);

        sampleString = sampleString.replaceAll("#", "");
        sampleString = sampleString.replaceAll(",", "");

        System.out.println("After: " + sampleString);
    }

}

The output from the above code:

Before: This game was amazing, #not
After: This game was amazing not

Expected output from the above code:

Before: This game was amazing, #not
After: This game was amazing

Any help would be appreciated, thanks Z19

Answer 1

You need to use regex

sampleString = sampleString.replaceAll("#[A-Za-z]+","");

If you are expecting lone hashtags not followed by text, use "#[A-Za-z]*"

The comment on your question addresses hashtags that are followed by more than just alpha characters - "#[^\\s]+ where [^\\s] means anything not whitespace.

Answer 2

I would go for some like

sampleString = sampleString.replaceAll(",\s+#[A-Za-z]+", "");

try using this website to help http://regexpal.com/