How to figure out exact reason why Regex is failing in java - java

I have a Regex Pattern that i am using to match screen.
When i use it to test in Sublime Text, the same is working just fine.
but in Java execution, the code is failing
System.out.println(Pattern.matches("(B+)?|(R+)?", "RRBRR"));//false
System.out.println(Pattern.matches("(B+)?|(R+)?", "RRRRR"));//true
The above code should be coming as true in both cases, whereas in java it is coming as false.
my basic requirement is to identify groups of unique character in sequence...
meaning if String is
RRRRBBBRRBBBRBBBRRR
Then it should identify as
RRRR BBB RR BBB R BBB RRR
Please help...Thanks in advance

Try this:
String value = "RRRRBBBRRBBBRBBBRRR";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("B+|R+");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(value);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group());
}
The fact that the first expression returns false is due to the fact that you have a B in a middle of several R so you don't have an exact match since your regular expression expect only Rs or Bs

matches adds an implicit ^ at the start & $ at the end which means substring matches wont work. find() will look for substring.
Matcher is best suited for this:
public static void main (String[] args) throws java.lang.Exception
{
String regex = "(B+)?|(R+)?";
Pattern pat = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher matcher = pat.matcher("RRBRR");
System.out.println(matcher.find());
int count = 0;
while(matcher.find()){
System.out.println(matcher.group());
count++;
}
System.out.println("Count:"+count);
}

Related

Java regex : find the last occurrence of a string using Matcher.matches()

I have following input String:
abc.def.ghi.jkl.mno
Number of dot characters may vary in the input. I want to extract the word after the last . (i.e. mno in the above example). I am using the following regex and its working perfectly fine:
String input = "abc.def.ghi.jkl.mno";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("([^.]+$)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
if(matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
However, I am using a third party library which does this matching (Kafka Connect to be precise) and I can just provide the regex pattern to it. The issue is, this library (whose code I can't change) uses matches() instead of find() to do the matching, and when I execute the same code with matches(), it doesn't work e.g.:
String input = "abc.def.ghi.jkl.mno";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("([^.]+$)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
if(matcher.matches()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
The above code doesn't print anything. As per the javadoc, matches() tries to match the whole String. Is there any way I can apply similar logic using matches() to extract mno from my input String?
You may use
".*\\.([^.]*)"
It matches
.*\. - any 0+ chars as many as possible up to the last . char
([^.]*) - Capturing group 1: any 0+ chars other than a dot.
See the regex demo and the Regulex graph:
To extract a word after the last . per your instruction you could do this without Pattern and Matcher as following:
String input = "abc.def.ghi.jkl.mno";
String getMe = input.substring(input.lastIndexOf(".")+1, input.length());
System.out.println(getMe);
This will work. Use .* at the beginning to enable it to match the entire input.
public static void main(String[] argv) {
String input = "abc.def.ghi.jkl.mno";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(".*([^.]{3})$");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
if(matcher.matches()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(0));
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
}
abc.def.ghi.jkl.mno
mno
This is a better pattern if the dot really is anywhere: ".*\\.([^.]+)$"

Find ALL matches of a regex pattern in Java - even overlapping ones [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Matcher not finding overlapping words?
(4 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I have a String of the form:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,...
I am trying to find all substrings in this string that contain exactly 4 digits. For this I have the regex [0-9],[0-9],[0-9],[0-9]. Unfortunately when I try to match the regex against my String, I never obtain all the substrings, only a part of all the possible substrings. For instance, in the example above I would only get:
1,2,3,4
5,6,7,8
although I expect to get:
1,2,3,4
2,3,4,5
3,4,5,6
...
How would I go about finding all matches corresponding to my regex?
for info, I am using Pattern and Matcher to find the matches:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile([0-9],[0-9],[0-9],[0-9]);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(myString);
List<String> matches = new ArrayList<String>();
while (matcher.find())
{
matches.add(matcher.group());
}
By default, successive calls to Matcher.find() start at the end of the previous match.
To find from a specific location pass a start position parameter to find of one character past the start of the previous find.
In your case probably something like:
while (matcher.find(matcher.start()+1))
This works fine:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[0-9],[0-9],[0-9],[0-9]");
public void test(String[] args) throws Exception {
String test = "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9";
Matcher m = p.matcher(test);
if(m.find()) {
do {
System.out.println(m.group());
} while(m.find(m.start()+1));
}
}
printing
0,1,2,3
1,2,3,4
...
If you are looking for a pure regex based solution then you may use this lookahead based regex for overlapping matches:
(?=((?:[0-9],){3}[0-9]))
Note that your matches are available in captured group #1
RegEx Demo
Code:
final String regex = "(?=((?:[0-9],){3}[0-9]))";
final String string = "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9";
final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
final Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
Code Demo
output:
0,1,2,3
1,2,3,4
2,3,4,5
3,4,5,6
4,5,6,7
5,6,7,8
6,7,8,9
Some sample code without regex (since it seems not useful to me). Also I would assume regex to be slower in this case. Yet it will only work as it is as long as the numbers are only 1 character long.
String s = "a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h";
for (int i = 0; i < s.length() - 8; i+=2) {
System.out.println(s.substring(i, i + 7));
}
Ouput for this string:
a,b,c,d
b,c,d,e
c,d,e,f
d,e,f,g
As #OldCurmudgeon pointed out, find() by default start looking from the end of the previous match. To position it right after the first matched element, introduce the first matched region as a capturing group, and use it's end index:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(\\d,)\\d,\\d,\\d");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9");
List<String> matches = new ArrayList<>();
int start = 0;
while (matcher.find(start)) {
start = matcher.end(1);
matches.add(matcher.group());
}
System.out.println(matches);
results in
[1,2,3,4, 2,3,4,5, 3,4,5,6, 4,5,6,7, 5,6,7,8, 6,7,8,9]
This approach would also work if your matching region is longer than one digit

Regex - How to discard match

How can I get a regular expression to discard a part of the match?
public class main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(?<=b)([xyz])(?:a*?)c");
String string = "abyaacbxaaac";
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string);
while(matcher.find()){
System.out.println(matcher.group());
}
}
}
The output here is:
yaac
xaaac
I'd like it to output only y and x when I run System.out.println(matcher.group());
I.e. Discarding what is matched by(?:a*?)
P.S.
I know I can use matcher.group(1) to get x and y on its own but I'd like the entire match to output x and y only without having to access specific groups.
You can use lookarounds in your regex to get only the part you need in match:
(?<=b)[xyz](?=a*c)
RegEx Demo
(?=a*c) is a positive lookahead to assert that we have 0 or more a followed by a c ahead. This is a zero width assertion so your match will still be one of [xyz] characters.

text wrongly matchs with sub string of words in group

I want to check the text to see if it starts with what or who and and is a question type, so for that I wrote the following code:
private static void startWithQOrIf(String commentstr){
String urlPattern = "(|who|what).*\\?.*$";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(urlPattern,Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(commentstr);
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("yes");
}
}
everything works good but for example when I try:
whooooooooo is the follower?
will match as well but should not because I am looking for who not whooooooooo
Any idea?
You can ensure a whole word using a word boundary \b:
(|who|what)\\b.*\\?.*$
^^
If the words in the alternation group are supposed to appear at the start of the string, you can just use matches and remove $ anchor:
String urlPattern = "(|who|what)\\b.*\\?.*";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(urlPattern,Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(commentstr);
if (m.matches()) { // < - Here, matches is used
System.out.println("yes");
}
Note that (|who|what) matches either an empty string, or who, or what. If you do not plan to allow empty string, use just (who|what).
You must use word boundaries.
String urlPattern = "\\b(who|what)\\b.*\\?.*$";

regular expression java

I am trying to Take the content between Input, my pattern is not doing the right thing please help.
below is the sudocode:
s="Input one Input Two Input Three";
Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("Input(.*?)");
Matcher m = pat.matcher(s);
if m.matches():
print m.group(..)
Required Output:
one
Two
Three
Use a lookahead for Input and use find in a loop, instead of matches:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("Input(.*?)(?=Input|$)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(s);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
See it working online: ideone
But it's better to use split here:
String[] result = s.split("Input");
// You need to ignore the first element in result, because it is empty.
See it working online: ideone
this does not work, because m.matches is true if and only if the whole string is matched by the expression. You could go two ways:
Use s.split("Input") instead, it gives you an array of the substrings between occurences of "Input"
Use Matcher.find() and Matcher.group(int). But be aware that your current expression will match everything after the first occurence of "Input", so you should change your expression.
Greetings,
Jost
import java.util.regex.*;
public class Regex {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String s="Input one Input Two Input Three";
Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("(Input) (\\w+)");
Matcher m = pat.matcher(s);
while( m.find() ) {
System.out.println( m.group(2) );
}
}
}

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