Question

in this text :

 text text text [[st: aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff]] text text text text [[st: ggg hhh iii jjj kkk lll mmm nnn]] text text text 

I’m trying to get the text between the [[st: and that ends with ]]

My program should output:

 aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff  (first match) ggg hhh iii jjj kkk \n lll mmm nnn(second match) 

But I can only get it to return the first [[st: and the last ]], so there is just one match instead of two. Any ideas?

Here’s my code:

package com.s2i.egc.test;  import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern;  public class TestRegex {      /**      * @param args      */     public static void main(String[] args) {          String bodyText = 'text text text [[st: aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff]] text text text text [[st: ggg hhh iii jjj kkk\n lll mmm nnn]] text text text';          String currentPattern = '\\[\\[st:.*\\]\\]';          Pattern myPattern = Pattern.compile(currentPattern, Pattern.DOTALL);          Matcher myMatcher = myPattern.matcher(bodyText);          int i = 1;          while (myMatcher.find()) {           String match = bodyText.substring(myMatcher.start() + 5, myMatcher.end() - 3);           System.out.println(match + ' (match #' + i + ')');           i++;         }                                  }  } 

Answer 1

The quantifier * (0 or more) is greedy by default, so it matches to the second ]].

Try changing to a reluctant pattern match:

String currentPattern = '\\[\\[st:.*?\\]\\]';