Question

Possible Duplicate:
RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

 I have this list of 100 names to be extracted that lie in between the tags. I need to extract just the data and not the tags using Java Regular Expressions. 

Eg: I need the data Aaron,Teb, Abacha, Jui, Abashidze, Harry. All in a new line.

    <a class="listing" href=http://eeee/a/hank_aaron/index.html">Aaron, Teb</a><br>
    <a class="listing" href=http://eeee/t/sani_abacha/index.html">Abacha, Jui</a><br>
    <a class="listing" href=http://eeee/i/aslan_abashidze/index.html">Abashidze, Harry</a><br>

I wrote the following code, but it extracts the tags too. Where am i going wrong. How do i replace the tags or Is the Regexp wrong.

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    URL oracle = new URL("http://eeee/all/people/index.html");
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(oracle.openStream()));
    String input;
    String REGEX = "<a class=\"listing\"[^>]*>";
    while ((input = in.readLine()) != null){
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile(REGEX);
        Matcher m = p.matcher(input);
        while(m.find()) {
            System.out.println(input);
        }
    }
    in.close();
}   

Answer 1

Use this regexp:

(?:<a class=\"listing\"[^>]*>)([^<]*)(?:<)

Its group 1 will capture the name.

P.S. You should move Pattern p = Pattern.compile(REGEX); outside the loop.