Question

I’m trying to parse following Cobol code in Java.

    PNAME.                                                                  P000
    084500     MOVE        src1 TO dest1                                    P110
    084510     MOVE        src2 TO dest2                                    P111
    084520     MOVE        src3 TO dest3                                    P115
    084530     MOVE        src4 TO dest4                                    P120
    084540     MOVE        src5 TO dest5.                                   P140
    084550     PERFORM     TOTO THRU TOTO-FN.                               P310

My target is to found the MOVE statement corresponding to a given name.
Ex : with dest5 I want to found “MOVE src5 TO dest5.”

My Java code is :

    String paragraphePart = "PNAME.                                                                  P000
084500     MOVE        src1 TO dest1                                    P110
084510     MOVE        src2 TO dest2                                    P111
084520     MOVE        src3 TO dest3                                    P115
084530     MOVE        src4 TO dest4                                    P120
084540     MOVE        src5 TO dest5.                                   P140
084550     PERFORM     TOTO THRU TOTO-FN.                               P310";
    Matcher m = Pattern.compile("MOVE((?!.*MOVE.*).)*TO\\s+[^\\.]*"+"dest5"+"(\\s+|\\.|$)",Pattern.MULTILINE).matcher(paragraphePart);
    while(m.find()){
    //treatement on m.group(0)
    }

m.group(0) contains :

    MOVE        src1 TO dest1                                    P110
    084510     MOVE        src2 TO dest2                                    P111
    084520     MOVE        src3 TO dest3                                    P115
    084530     MOVE        src4 TO dest4                                    P120
    084540     MOVE        src5 TO dest5.

But I only want to get this line : “MOVE src5 TO dest5.”
In my regex I’ve to use something like MOVE.*TO because I can have this case :

    084540     MOVE                        P120
    084550     src5 TO dest5.

Here I have to get MOVE P120
084550 src5 TO dest5
and not just src5 TO dest5.

So how could i tell to my regex find MOVE followed by anything – but not another “MOVE” – and followed by “TO” ?

Thanks

[SOLVED]
I use :

    Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(MOVE(?!.*?MOVE).*?\\s+TO\\s+[^\\.]*"+fieldName+"(\\s+|\\.|$))", Pattern.DOTALL).matcher(paragraphePart);

Thank you anubhava!
https://stackoverflow.com/a/8803309/1140748

[NEW PB]
Using

Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(MOVE(?!.*?MOVE).*?\\s+TO\\s+[^\\.]*"+"dest5"+"(\\s+|\\.|$))", Pattern.DOTALL).matcher(paragraphePart);
I can get MOVE src5 TO dest5. But if I try using “dest4” to get this line “MOVE src4 TO dest4” it doesn’t work anymore. Have you an idea?

Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(MOVE(?!.*?MOVE.*?"+fieldName+").*?\\s+\\w+\\s+TO\\s+[^\\.]*"+fieldName+"(\\s+|\\.|$))", Pattern.DOTALL).matcher(paragraphePart);

Answer 1

You can use following negative lookahead based regex:

String needle = "dest5";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(MOVE(?!.*?MOVE.*?" + needle + ").*?\\s+.+?\\s+TO\\s+" + needle + ")", Pattern.DOTALL).matcher(paragraphePart);