Regex Help -- Ignore in between quotes

Question

I know there's a million and one question & answers on Regex but I can't seem to find a straight-forward one that helps me solve this problem while also understanding it.

I want to take a String and ignore anything in the String that is between two quotes. For example,

String myString = "(\"You entered a value of \" + moneyAmount + \" 
dollars.\");";

How do I get it so anything between quotes ("You entered a value" and "dollars.") is forgotten? I would want my new String to be:

( + moneyAmount + );

Thank you and please help me understand regez!!

Answer 1

You could use \".*?\" (but you have to escape the literal backslash and the quote, so it looks it a little funky). Like,

System.out.println(myString.replaceAll("\\\".*?\\\"", ""));

Outputs (as requested)

( + moneyAmount + );