Question

I have a Regex pattern that matches data I need to parse exactly as I need it. Unfortunately with the split method it is deleting the desired data and passing the garbage out to me. Normally I would just try another Regex expression doing the opposite but its not quite as simple as it sounds. It must be in Java as this section is part of a much bigger program/package.

Pattern p = Pattern.compile(“/^\{\?|\:|\=|\||(\-
configurationFile)|(isUsingRESTDescription)|(\restURL)=(\s|\w|\.|\-|\:|\/|\;|\[|\]|\’|\})\r/g”);

This is the string I’m parsing (there are carriage returns after each section):

• SearchResult::getBleh(): {BLEHID=BLEH blehLastmoddate=1-Jul-11 bleh=BLEH; Beh description=blehbleh BlEh=bleh1231bleh bLeH=bleh-blehbleh 1 media=http://bleh.com/13 Date=22-May-12 name=[]} String[] items = p.split(input^);

The above gives me the opposite of what I want.

You’d think someone would have had this problem. Help would be appreciated :).

Answer 1

Use capture groups. You can read about them in the javadoc for Pattern.

An example:

  Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[^/]*/([^/]*)/.*");
  Matcher m = p.matcher("foo/bar/input");
  if (m.find()) {
     String captured = m.group(1); // This equals "bar"
     String matched = m.group(0); // This equals "foo/bar/input"
  }

Anything located inside of parentheses in a Pattern is a capture group. The Matcher indexes the capture groups based on when the opening parentheses is encountered. Group 0 is always the entire matched region.