Question

Hello I am trying to extract a uk postcode from a string i.e. “the person’s house is at SS9 8ID we’ll be there at 8pm” so I can extract the “SS9 8ID” bit. I’ve tried the following code but it’s not working for some reason…any ideas???

        String pc1="^([A-PR-UWYZ](([0-9](([0-9]|[A-HJKSTUW])?)?)|([A-HK-Y][0-9]([0-9]|[ABEHMNPRVWXY])?)) [0-9][ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z]{2})|GIR 0AA$";
        String test="the person's house is at SS9 8ID we'll be there at 8pm";
      Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(pc1);
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(test.toUpperCase());
        if (matcher.matches()) {
                //Log.d("pccode:::", matcher.group(1) );
            Log.d("pccode:::", matcher.group());
        } else { Log.d("NO","NO PCODE"); }

Answer 1

The matches method matches the whole string, you should use find instead. And don’t use ^ and $ in the expression.

Also the SS9 8ID doesn’t match the regexp, because ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z doesn’t include letter I which is in the postcode.