How to replace all characters in a Java string with stars

by

Java 11 and later

str = "*".repeat(str.length());

Note: This replaces newlines \n with *. If you want to preserve \n, see solution below.

Java 10 and earlier

str = str.replaceAll(".", "*");

This preserves newlines.

To replace newlines with * as well in Java 10 and earlier, you can use:

str = str.replaceAll("(?s).", "*");

The (?s) doesn’t match anything but activates DOTALL mode which makes . also match \n.

More Related Contents:

  1. What do the characters ((?:(?:(?: mean in pattern-matching? [duplicate]
  2. Java: splitting a comma-separated string but ignoring commas in quotes
  3. Split string with dot as delimiter
  4. Use String.split() with multiple delimiters
  5. Java how to replace 2 or more spaces with single space in string and delete leading and trailing spaces
  6. Java Regex Capturing Groups
  7. SCJP6 regex issue
  8. Get the index of a pattern in a string using regex
  9. Regular expression for excluding special characters [closed]
  10. How to determine if a number is a prime with regex?
  11. Java regex to extract text between tags
  12. Why does this Java regex cause “illegal escape character” errors?
  13. java.util.regex – importance of Pattern.compile()?
  14. Any character including newline – Java Regex
  15. How do I create a Stream of regex matches?
  16. Regex to match words of a certain length
  17. Java regular expression OR operator
  18. regex to match substring after nth occurence of pipe character
  19. What is the difference between `Greedy` and `Reluctant` regular expression quantifiers?
  20. Understanding regex in Java: split(“\t”) vs split(“\\t”) – when do they both work, and when should they be used
  21. How to replace ” \ ” with ” \\ ” in java
  22. Why doesn’t this regex work as expected in Java?
  23. Validate a file name on Windows
  24. Java split is eating my characters
  25. Regular expression to validate username
  26. Convert Javascript regular expression to Java syntax
  27. Java Pattern Matcher: create new or reset?
  28. String.replaceAll is considerably slower than doing the job yourself
  29. Remove all occurrences of \ from string
  30. Extract ip addresses from Strings using regex

Leave a Comment