So, it’s great that we now have both approaches (ANT and non-ANT) listed here so people can google them and decide whichever they need or like

http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTypes/filterchain.html#expandproperties

if (string1.matches(regex))
{
string2 = string1.replace(regex,replacement)
}
else
{
string2 = someOtherString; // or string1, whatever
}

You can also override an existing variable w/ the results of the regex replace so you don’t need to create a new var to hold string2, if you only need the resulting replaced one.

Combine that with Ant-Contrib’s support for and and you can loop through lists (strings, files, dirs), select what you want to manipulate, regex ‘em, and be a happy camper… at least as happy as one can ever be writing code with XML syntax, anyway.

For example, see http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/org.eclipse.dash/athena/org.eclipse.dash.commonbuilder/org.eclipse.dash.common.releng/promote.xml?view=annotate&root=Technology_Project, line 130.

and here is the output:

SomeValue[propertyA], SomeValue[propertyA].SomeOtherValue: propertyB, constantValue

Looks as intended, or am I missing something? If so, please feel free to post a complete code example

– quote from JavaDoc –
The replacement string may contain references to subsequences captured during the previous match: Each occurrence of $g will be replaced by the result of evaluating group(g). The first number after the $ is always treated as part of the group reference. Subsequent numbers are incorporated into g if they would form a legal group reference. Only the numerals ‘0′ through ‘9′ are considered as potential components of the group reference. If the second group matched the string “foo”, for example, then passing the replacement string “$2bar” would cause “foobar” to be appended to the string buffer. A dollar sign ($) may be included as a literal in the replacement string by preceding it with a backslash (\$).
–

The missing piece is that the replacement string has to be replaced “$” ->”\$” before the appendReplacement.

It is stupid…. I have to do another replace in order to do a replace.
Why don’t JDK provide a nice and friendly API?