This is called string interpolation; it doesn't exist as such in Java.

One approach is to use String.format:

String string = String.format("A string %s", aVariable);

Another approach is to use a templating library such as Velocity or FreeMarker.

You can use String.format or MessageFormat.format

E.g.,

MessageFormat.format("A sample value {1} with a sample string {0}", 
    new Object[] {"first", 1});

or simply

MessageFormat.format("A sample value {1} with a sample string {0}", "first", 1);

A simple, inefficient solution is to iterate over the replacement array, looking for #1, #2 etc:

String[] arr = new String[]{"one","two","three"};
String toReplace = "first $1 second $2 third $3";
for (int i =0; i<arr.length;i++){
    toReplace = toReplace.replaceAll("\\$"+(i+1), arr[i]);
}
System.out.println(toReplace);

Output:

first one second two third three

A more efficient approach would be to iterate once over the input string itself. Here's a quick and dirty version:

String[] arr = new String[]{"one","two","three"};
String toReplace = "first $1 second $2 third $3";
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i=0;i<toReplace.length();i++){
    if (toReplace.charAt(i)=='#' && i<toReplace.length()-1){
        int index = Character.digit(toReplace.charAt(i+1),10);
        if (index >0 && index<arr.length){
            sb.append(arr[index]);
            continue;
        }
    }
    sb.append(toReplace.charAt(i));
}
System.out.println(toReplace);

Output:

first one second two third three

1. A somewhat tedious solution would be to scan for all occurences of A and B and note their indexes in the string, and then use StringBuilder.replace(int start, int end, String str) method. (in naive form this would not be very efficient though, approaching smth like square complexity, or more precisely "number of variables" * "number of possible replacements")

2. If you know all of your operators, you could do split on them (like on "+") and then replace individual "A" and "B" (you'd have to do trimming whitespace chars first of course) in an array or ArrayList.

You can use printf in Java. It does the String.format() internally, so you can write pretty much in the same way as Python (or any language with printf-like functionality).

String words = "these words";
System.out.printf("I want to substitute %s!", words);