正则表达式替换撇号

Question

I need to replace all punctuation symbols in given string except " ' " when it is before text, after and between. For replacing I use replaceAll() with regex "[.,?;:?/]|(.=.['])([^A-Za-z]')" . But it doesn't work with 5th example. Any ideas how to do it?

Examples:

1. " ' " -> " "

2. " ''' " -> " "

3. " text'text " -> " text'text "

4. " text' " -> " text' "

5. " 'text " -> " 'text "

Answer 1

The regex provided is syntactically invalid (2 opening parentheses, 1 closing), but that may be a typo.

The suggested solution (regex only):

(?<![a-zA-Z])'(?![a-zA-Z])

A negative lookbehind checking for absence of text followed by the apostrophe and a negative lookahead again checking for the absence of text.

You might want to adjust the character class defining 'text'.
Demo available here (Regex 101) .

Answer 2

Match any of the symbols, or match an apostrophe that is not preceded or succeeded by a word character.

Those are zero-width negative lookbehind assertion and zero-width negative lookahead assertion. Most regex implementations have them, but some do not. You can only put constant-size expressions within them.

[.,?;:?/]|(?<!\w)'(?!\w)