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Suspicious regex expression argument

Reports calls to String.replaceAll() or String.split() where the first argument is a single regex meta character argument.

The regex meta characters are one of .$|()[{^?*+\. They have a special meaning in regular expressions. For example, calling "ab.cd".replaceAll(".", "-") produces "-----", because the dot matches any character. Most likely the escaped variant "\\." was intended instead.

Using File.separator as a regex is also reported. The File.separator has a platform specific value. It equals to / on Linux and Mac but equals to \ on Windows, which is not a valid regular expression, so such code is not portable.

Example:

s.replaceAll(".", "-");

After the quick-fix is applied:

s.replaceAll("\\.", "-");

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

ReplaceAllDot
Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Probable bugs

Availability

By default bundled with

IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1, Qodana for JVM 2024.1,

Can be installed with plugin

Java, 241.18072

Last modified: 18 June 2024