Regex replace all commas with value

Question

I have a string that looks like this: \"Doe, John, A\" (lastname, firstname, middle initial).

I\'m trying to write a regular expression that converts the string into \"D

Answer 1

String.replace only replaces the first occurence. To replace them all, add the "g" flag for "global". You can also use character groups and the +operator (one or more) to match chains of characters:

aString.replace("[,\s]+", "*", "g");

This will replace all chains of commas and whitespaces with a *.