java string.getIndex correct index ignoring punctuation

Question

If I had a string like this one that has punctuation like ,, ?, ;, , what if I wanted to use string.indexOf(); to search for a string such as " like ", and get back the index?

If I remove all punctuation I could search it but because of the punctuation earlier it would give me the wrong index in the string. Is there a built-in way in Java to do such a thing? I have a workaround in mind I am going to test but won't bother if there's a proper way.

Answer 1

Yes, there is! It is called regular expressions .

Build a regex matching your punctuation and seeked substring, and search for it.

You might want to also have a look at the Matcher and Pattern classes.