Question

I have the following String that I need to parse. I am looking for the Board State for each Slot number.

Some lines...
SLOT  2 (RP/LC 2): Random Text
   MAIN:
   PCA:
... More text
Board State is Val
... More text

Some lines...
SLOT  3 (RP/LC 3): Random Text
   MAIN:
   PCA:
... More text
Board State is Val2
... More text
subslot 0/9/0

Currently I have this.

String regex = "(^SLOT\\s*\\d+).*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*.*\\s*(Board.*)";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(commandOutput);

while(matcher.find()) {
     //Do Something
}

I am hard coding the number of lines it needs to skip but I don’t like this and it’s bad programming.

Is it possible to do something like

regex = "(^SLOT\\s*\\d+)(.*\\s*)+(Board.*)"; //This obviously doesn't work. Find slot, then skip one or more lines until it finds Board. I am using \\s instead of \\r\\n because \\s skips tabs as well. 

Edit: As to precisely what I want from the regex. Put SLOT # in a group and the Board State is Val in another group for all the SLOTS.

Answer 1

I would suggest using this simplified regex for your problem like this:

Matcher m = Pattern.compile("SLOT\\s+(\\d+).*?Board\\s+State\\s+is\\s+(\\w+)",
            Pattern.DOTALL).matcher(text);
while(m.find())
    System.out.printf("Slot is [%s], Board is [%s]%n", m.group(1), m.group(2));

OUTPUT:

Slot is [2], Board is [Val]
Slot is [3], Board is [Val2]