Question

I want to split the string

String fields = "name[Employee Name], employeeno[Employee No], dob[Date of Birth], joindate[Date of Joining]";

to

name
employeeno
dob
joindate

I wrote the following java code for this but it is printing only name other matches are not printing.

String fields = "name[Employee Name], employeeno[Employee No], dob[Date of Birth], joindate[Date of Joining]";

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\[.+\\]+?,?\\s*" );

String[] split = pattern.split(fields);
for (String string : split) {
    System.out.println(string);
}

What am I doing wrong here?

Thank you

Answer 1

This part:

\\[.+\\]

matches the first [, the .+ then gobbles up the entire string (if no line breaks are in the string) and then the \\] will match the last ].

You need to make the .+ reluctant by placing a ? after it:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\[.+?\\]+?,?\\s*");

And shouldn’t \\]+? just be \\] ?