So I have a string, and I want to strip out some parts of it using, for example, the firt and last characters of the "interesting" part. String dirty = "$!$!%!%$something interesting&!!$!%$something interesting2"; And the output something like: String clean = "something interesting:something interesting2"; Note: The code needs to work without knowing the random part, changing everytime the program runs. I researched and only found code that does it, but only knowing the random segment.