Question

Suppose I have arbitrary text with a currency value in it, like this:

The price today is $1,234.56! Don't miss out!

I want to extract the number of cents as an int, ie:

123456

Some criteria:

• The 000’s comma is optional
• The price is less than $1,000,000.00
• The $ is always there
• The decimal part is always there

I have tried using Pattern and Matcher, but it seems all too messy.

What is the simplest code that will do this?

Answer 1

I think this single line, which includes the parse to int, is about as terse as it can be:

int cents = Integer.parseInt(input.replaceAll(".*\\$((\\d+),)?(\\d+)\\.(\\d+).*", "$2$3$4"));