How do I extract values of an unknown length out of a string in Java?

Question

I'm working on a project where I'm converting from Fortran to Java. A lot of the changes are straight forward changes. However, in some cases, I have situations like this:

IF (___) GOTO number will be changed to } while (___);

MOD(___,___) will become ___ % ___

Where ___ represents characters of an unknown length.

How do I go about finding and replacing these strings?

Thanks!

---

Let me be more clear: the project must stand as it is. I realize there are tools that does this, and I realize that this isn't ideal. It is what it is unfortunately, so how would I go about doing what I'm asking?

Answer 1

You really probably need to do this via some kind of language-aware parsing of your Fortran code, rather than just by search-and-replace. You might be able to craft some regex that will cover all your cases, but it's always going to be nasty and error-prone.

I recommend looking at this project that provides Fortran parsing tools (in Java!) that will allow you to manipulate a Fortran abstract syntax tree and then code generate Java appropriately, if that is indeed what you are doing.