java replaceLast()

If you don't need regex, here's a substring alternative.

public static String replaceLast(String string, String toReplace, String replacement) {
    int pos = string.lastIndexOf(toReplace);
    if (pos > -1) {
        return string.substring(0, pos)
             + replacement
             + string.substring(pos + toReplace.length());
    } else {
        return string;
    }
}

Testcase:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    System.out.println(replaceLast("foobarfoobar", "foo", "bar")); // foobarbarbar
    System.out.println(replaceLast("foobarbarbar", "foo", "bar")); // barbarbarbar
    System.out.println(replaceLast("foobarfoobar", "faa", "bar")); // foobarfoobar
}

It could (of course) be done with regex:

public class Test {

    public static String replaceLast(String text, String regex, String replacement) {
        return text.replaceFirst("(?s)"+regex+"(?!.*?"+regex+")", replacement);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(replaceLast("foo AB bar AB done", "AB", "--"));
    }
}

although a bit cpu-cycle-hungry with the look-aheads, but that will only be an issue when working with very large strings (and many occurrences of the regex being searched for).

A short explanation (in case of the regex being AB):

(?s)     # enable dot-all option
A        # match the character 'A'
B        # match the character 'B'
(?!      # start negative look ahead
  .*?    #   match any character and repeat it zero or more times, reluctantly
  A      #   match the character 'A'
  B      #   match the character 'B'
)        # end negative look ahead

EDIT

Sorry to wake up an old post. But this is only for non-overlapping instances. For example .replaceLast("aaabbb", "bb", "xx"); returns "aaaxxb", not "aaabxx"

True, that could be fixed as follows:

public class Test {

    public static String replaceLast(String text, String regex, String replacement) {
        return text.replaceFirst("(?s)(.*)" + regex, "$1" + replacement);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(replaceLast("aaabbb", "bb", "xx"));
    }
}

use replaceAll and add a dollar sign right after your pattern:

replaceAll("pattern$", replacement);

You can combine StringUtils.reverse() with String.replaceFirst()