Question

I am trying to read a line and parse a value using regular expression in java. The line that contains the value looks something like this,

...... TESTYY912345 .......
...... TESTXX967890 ........

Basically, it contains 4 letters, then any two ASCII values followed by numeric 9 then (any) digits. And, i want to get the value, 912345 and 967890.

This is what I have so far in regular expression,

… TEST[\x00-\xff]{2}[9]{1} …

But, this skips the 9 and parse 12345 and 67890. (I want to include 9 as well).

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You are pretty close. Capture the entire group (9\\d*) after matching TEST\\p{ASCII}{2}. This way, you’ll capture the 9 and the following digits:

String s  = "...... TESTYY912345 ......";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("TEST\\p{ASCII}{2}(9\\d+)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
if (m.find()) {
  System.out.println(m.group(1)); // 912345
}