Question

I have been trawling through documentation and posts in stackoverflow on this but can’t seem to get the syntax right. I want replace everything between the return keyword and trailing ; in something like this:

return new Foo() {

    void bar(){
        System.out.print("Hello World");
    }
};

This is my most informed attempt so far but it doesn’t work: return(.*?);

Any help much appreciated 😉

Answer 1

Use the “dot matches new line” switch (?s) and look-arounds:

(?s)(?<=return).*?(?=;)

This entire regex matches anything between but not including return and ; across multiple lines.