Question

Using Java, I want to extract the words between the dollarsign symbol $.

For example:

String = " this is first attribute $color$. this is the second attribute $size$"

I want to pull out the strings: color and size and put them into a List.

I have tried:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(\\$) .* (\\$)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(sentence);

but I get the output:

"$color$.this is the second attribute $size$"

What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

The problem is that the regex you are using is greedy and consumes everything beginning at the first $ until the last $ in your string. You have to add a ? after the * to make the regex nongreedy:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\$(.*?)\\$");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(sentence);
List<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();
for(int i=1; i <= matcher.groupCount(); i++)
    result.add(matcher.group(i);