Question

Need some regex help in Java. I have a string, which contains text and always a date after it. Then after the date, without a space, a new text starts and ends with a date. and so on and on and on. I need to get all the text instances out with loop. It needs to exclude date from the beginning and expect date in the end. Could anyone suggest a good regex for it?

String candidateString = "dffsd fs sfd 12.12.12asd saddsa dasd 12.12.12fsadf sdfsdf sdf 10.10.10";
Pattern p2 = Pattern.compile(".*?(?![0-9][0-9].[0-9][0-9].[0-9][0-9])[a-zA-Z] (?=[0-9][0-9].[0-9][0-9].[0-9][0-9])");
Matcher matcher2 = p2.matcher(candidateString);
while (matcher2.find()) {
  System.out.println(matcher2.group());
}

This code expects date in the end, but I can’t figure out how to exclude date from the beginning.

Answer 1

See if this is what you want?

    String candidateString =
        "Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 language reference 13.02.12";
        //"dffsd fs sfd 12.12.12asd saddsa dasd 12.12.12fsadf sdfsdf sdf 10.10.10";

    Pattern p2 =
        Pattern
            .compile("(.*?(?![0-9][0-9]\\.[0-9][0-9]\\.[0-9][0-9])) ([0-9][0-9]\\.[0-9][0-9]\\.[0-9][0-9])");

    Matcher matcher2 = p2.matcher(candidateString);

    while (matcher2.find()) {
        System.out.println("String: |" + matcher2.group(1) + "| Date: |"
            + matcher2.group(2) + "|");
    }

This prints the below for me (Have included | [pipes] to show the boundaries).

String: |dffsd fs sfd| Date: |12.12.12|
String: |asd saddsa dasd| Date: |12.12.12|
String: |fsadf sdfsdf sdf| Date: |10.10.10|

and

String: |Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 language reference| Date: |13.02.12|