Question

I have a long string that I want to parse and retrieve a value.
I was thinking of using patterns but I am a bit rusty at this.

This is the part of the string that interests me:

…sinking will be 44% successful…

the word ‘sinking’ is the keyword. I am looking to get the percentage value(44% in this case)

What is the best way?
Thank you.

** the words ‘will be’ may change.

Answer 1

Here’s a regex solution:

String str = "...sinking will be 44% successful...";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile( "sinking will be (\\S*) successful" );
Matcher m = p.matcher( str );
if ( m.find() ) {
    String percent = m.group( 1 );
}

If you want just the numeral value of the percent, change your pattern to this:

"sinking will be (\\d*)% successful"

If any of the preceding text is irrelevant, you just want to grab the percent in a line, use this pattern:

"(\\d*%)"

Edit: If your keyword is “sinking”, and you want the first percentage value after this word, this would be your pattern:

"sinking(?:[\\w\\s]*) (\\d+%)"