replace multiple occurrence of duplicate string in Scala with empty - scala

Question

I have a string as
something,'' something,nothing_something,op nothing_something,'' cat,cat
I want to achieve my output as
'' something,op nothing_something,cat
Is there any way to achieve it?

Answer 1

If I understand your requirement correctly, here's one approach with the following steps:
Split the input string by "," and create a list of indexed-CSVs and convert it to a Map
Generate 2-combinations of the indexed-CSVs
Check each of the indexed-CSV pairs and capture the index of any CSV which is contained within the other CSV
Since the CSVs corresponding to the captured indexes are contained within some other CSV, removing these indexes will result in remaining indexes we would like to keep
Use the remaining indexes to look up CSVs from the CSV Map and concatenate them back to a string
Here is sample code applying to a string with slightly more general comma-separated values:
val str = "cats,a cat,cat,there is a cat,my cat,cats,cat"
val csvIdxList = (Stream from 1).zip(str.split(",")).toList
val csvMap = csvIdxList.toMap
val csvPairs = csvIdxList.combinations(2).toList
val csvContainedIdx = csvPairs.collect{
case List(x, y) if x._2.contains(y._2) => y._1
case List(x, y) if y._2.contains(x._2) => x._1
}.
distinct
// csvContainedIdx: List[Int] = List(3, 6, 7, 2)
val csvToKeepIdx = (1 to csvIdxList.size) diff csvContainedIdx
// csvToKeepIdx: scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int] = Vector(1, 4, 5)
val strDeduped = csvToKeepIdx.map( csvMap.getOrElse(_, "") ).mkString(",")
// strDeduped: String = cats,there is a cat,my cat
Applying the above to your sample string something,'' something,nothing_something,op nothing_something would yield the expected result:
strDeduped: String = '' something,op nothing_something

Answer 2

First create an Array of words separated by commas using split command on the given String, and do other operations using filter and mkString as below:
s.split(",").filter(_.contains(' ')).mkString(",")
In Scala REPL:
scala> val s = "something,'' something,nothing_something,op nothing_something"
s: String = something,'' something,nothing_something,op nothing_something
scala> s.split(",").filter(_.contains(' ')).mkString(",")
res27: String = '' something,op nothing_something
As per Leo C comment, I tested it as below with some other String:
scala> val s = "something,'' something anything anything anything anything,nothing_something,op op op nothing_something"
s: String = something,'' something anything anything anything anything,nothing_something,op op op nothing_something
scala> s.split(",").filter(_.contains(' ')).mkString(",")
res43: String = '' something anything anything anything anything,op op op nothing_something