Can I replace a certain character in a string with another string?

Question

I'm trying to make a hangman game. s is the string that contains the user's guess, and hiddenWord is a string of all question marks until the user guesses one of the letters correctly. How could I replace the question marks with the s string?

public void correctGuess()
{
    hiddenWord.replace ("?", s);
    JOptionPane.showMessageDialog (null, "That was correct! Guess again.");
}

Answer 1

The replace method doesn't change the original String , which is immutable. It returns the modified String . Try

hiddenWord = hiddenWord.replace("?", s);

Answer 2

You can't simply replace characters in strings in java, as strings are immutable. What you can do is create a new string the way rgettman suggested.

But would it not replace all the question marks in the hiddenWord with the s instead of replacing them only at the index(s) where the letter, which the user correctly guessed, is found in the hiddenWord?