I'm running into the problem of finding a searched pattern within a larger pattern in my Java program. For example, I'll try and find all for loops, but will stumble upon formula. Most of the suggestions I've found talk about using regular expression searches like
String regex = "\\b"+keyword+"\\b";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(searchString);
or some variant of this. The issue I'm running into is that I'm crawling through code, not a book-like text where there are spaces on either side of every word. For example, this will miss for(, which I would like to find. Is there another clever way to find whole words only?
Edit: Thanks for the suggestions. How about cases in which there the keyword starts on the first entry of the string? For example,
class Vec {
public:
...
};
where I'm searching for class (or alternatively public). The patterns suggested by Thanga, Austin Lee, npinti, and Kai Iskratsch do not work in this case. Any ideas?
In your case, the issue is that the \b flag will look for punctuation marks, white spaces and the beginning or end of the string. An opening bracket does not fall within any of these categories, and is thus omitted.
The easiest way to fix this would be to replace "\\b"+keyword+"\\b" with "[\\b(]"+keyword+"[\\b)]".
In regex syntax, the square brackets denote a set of which the regex engine will attempt to match any character it contains.
As per this previous SO question, it would seem that \b and [\b] are not the same. Whilst \b represents a word boundary, [\b] represents a backspace character. To fix this, simply replace "\\b"+keyword+"\\b" with "(\b|\()"+keyword+"(\b|\))".
Regex should match 0 or more chars. The below code change will fix the issue
String regex = ".*("+keyword+").*";
You could modify your regex to search for multiple characters afterwords, for example
[^\w]+"for"+[^\w] using the Pattern class in Java.
For your reference:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html
Basically you will have to adapt your regex to all the possible patterns it can find. But considering your actually dealing with code, you are better of building a parser/tokenizer for that language, or using one that already exists. Then all you have to do is run through the tokens to find the the ones you want.
Ok, quick question. I'm a bit of a newbie at Java, and I have an assignment in which I have to get the name of a person from the title tag of a page. I know my regex, but I can't (or don't know how) to escape some characters.
Example
<title>Mr. Somebody | Department in which he's in</title>
So, basically I need a regexp that would get me the "Mr. Somebody". I've tried :
Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("<title>(.+?)|");
Matcher mat = pat.matcher(data);
boolean found = false;
while (!found && mat.find()) {
name = mat.group(0);
found = true;
}
System.out.println("Found a name : " + name);
My problem is, that no matter what I've tried, the most I could get was the first character. Do you think that a more simpler approach with indexOf and substrings would be better, or is a regexp still viable?
I know that usually regexps are not suitable for parsing html tags, but I'm considering this search more of a string search, because I'm not interested in the whole tag (or other tags that might be contained within).
Any kind of help is greatly appreciated :)
You need to escape the pipe because it's a character with a special meaning in regex. Try:
<title>(.+?)\\|
| means "or" which means that the regex will try to match with either <title>(.+?) or nothing (there's nothing after the |.
When it tries to match with <title>(.+?), it will get only the first character because .+? is lazy (it matches as little as possible).
Alternatively, you can use a negated class:
<title>([^\\|]+)
[^\\|]+ will match any character except a pipe.
It should work
Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("<title>(.*?)\\|");
and use
mat.group(1) instead of mat.group(o);
Here's a way to do it that will avoid using Pattern and Matcher, if you want:
String name = "<title>Mr. Somebody | Department in which he's in</title>";
name = name.substring(7).replaceAll("\\|.*", "");
The substring(7) will remove the first tag, then replaceAll will remove everything from the pipe character onwards (replace with empty string).
Maybe this it what you want:
(?<=<title>)(.+?(?=[|].+?))(?=.+?</title>)
It returns Mr. Somebody. You can test it here for example.
Here is a way :
<\s*title[^>]*>\s*([^\|]+)
Takes away leading white space.
Handles any possible weird attributes that someone may add to a title tag, i.e. <title data-cookies="I hide cookies here :P">I like titles</title>
Handles any whitespace added before title, i.e. < title > is still valid.
As a beginner with regex i believe im about to ask something too simple but ill ask anyway hope it won't bother you helping me..
Lets say i have a text like "hello 'cool1' word! 'cool2'"
and i want to get the first quote's text (which is 'cool1' without the ')
what should be my pattern? and when using matcher, how do i guarantee it will remain the first quote and not the second?
(please suggest a solution only with regex.. )
Use this regular expression:
'([^']*)'
Use as follows: (ideone)
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("'([^']*)'");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(s);
if (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
Or this if you know that there are no new-line characters in your quoted string:
'(.*?)'
when using matcher, how do i guarantee it will remain the first quote and not the second?
It will find the first quoted string first because it starts seaching from left to right. If you ask it for the next match it will give you the second quoted string.
If you want to find first quote's text without the ' you can/should use Lookahead and Lookbehind mechanism like
(?<=').*?(?=')
for example
System.out.println("hello 'cool1' word! 'cool2'".replaceFirst("(?<=').*?(?=')", "ABC"));
//out -> hello 'ABC' word! 'cool2'
more info
You could just split the string on quotes and get the second piece (which will be between the first and second quotes).
If you insist on regex, try this:
/^.*?'(.*?)'/
Make sure it's set to multiline, unless you know you'll never have newlines in your input. Then, get the subpattern from the result and that will be your string.
To support double quotes too:
/^.*?(['"])(.*?)\1/
Then get subpattern 2.
I am working in Java to read a string of over 100000 characters.
I have a list of keywords, that I search the string for, and if the string is present I call a function which does some internal processing.
The kind of keyword I have is "face", for example - I wish to get all the patterns where I have matches for "faces" not "facebook". I can accept a space character behind the face in the string so if in a string I have a match like " face" or " faces" or "face " or " faces" i can accept that too. However I can not accept "duckface" or "duckface " etc.
I have written the regex
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\s+"+keyword+"s\\s+|\\s+");
where keyword is my list of keywords, but I am not getting the desired results. Can you read my description and please suggest what might be issue and how I can fix it?
Also if a pointer to a really good regex for Java page is shared I would appreciate that as well.
Thank you Contributers ..
Edit
The reason I know it is not working is I have used the following code:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\s+"+keyword+"s\\s+|\\s+");
Matcher m = p.matcher(myInputDataSting);
if(m.find())
{
System.out.println("Its a Match: "+m.group());
}
This returns a blank string...
If keyword is "face", then your current regex is
\s+faces\s+|\s+
which matches either one or more whitespace characters, followed by faces, followed by one or more whitespace characters, or one or more whitespace characters. (The pipe | has very low precedence.)
What you really want is
\bfaces?\b
which matches a word boundary, followed by face, optionally followed by s, followed by a word boundary.
So, you can write:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\b"+keyword+"s?\\b");
(though obviously this will only work for words like face that form their plurals by simply adding s).
You can find a comprehensive listing of Java's regular-expression support at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html, but it's not much of a tutorial. For that, I'd recommend just Googling "regular expression tutorial", and finding one that suits you. (It doesn't have to be Java-specific: most of the tutorials you'll find are for flavors of regular-expression that are very similar to Java's.)
You should use
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\b"+keyword+"s?\b");
, where keyword is not plural. \\b means that keyword must be as a complete word in searched string. s? means that keyword's value may end with s.
If you are not familar enough with regular expressions I recommend reading http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/regex/index.html, because there are examples and explanations.
I'm trying to parse through a string formatted like this, except with more values:
Key1=value,Key2=value,Key3=value,Key4=value,Key5=value,Key6=value,Key7=value
The Regex
((Key1)=(.*)),((Key2)=(.*)),((Key3)=(.*)),((Key4)=(.*)),((Key5)=(.*)),((Key6)=(.*)),((Key7)=(.*))
In the actual string, there are about double the amount of key/values, but I'm keeping it short for brevity. I have them in parentheses so I can call them in groups. The keys I have stored as Constants, and they will always be the same. The problem is, it never finds a match which doesn't make sense (unless the Regex is wrong)
Judging by your comment above, it sounds like you're creating the Pattern and Matcher objects and associating the Matcher with the target string, but you aren't actually applying the regex. That's a very common mistake. Here's the full sequence:
String regex = "Key1=(.*),Key2=(.*)"; // etc.
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher m = p.matcher(targetString);
// Now you have to apply the regex:
if (m.find())
{
String value1 = m.group(1);
String value2 = m.group(2);
// etc.
}
Not only do you have to call find() or matches() (or lookingAt(), but nobody ever uses that one), you should always call it in an if or while statement--that is, you should make sure the regex actually worked before you call any methods like group() that require the Matcher to be in a "matched" state.
Also notice the absence of most of your parentheses. They weren't necessary, and leaving them out makes it easier to (1) read the regex and (2) keep track of the group numbers.
Looks like you'd do better to do:
String[] pairs = data.split(",");
Then parse the key/value pairs one at a time
Your regex is working for me...
If you are always getting an IllegalStateException, I would say that you are trying to do something like:
matcher.group(1);
without having invoked the find() method.
You need to call that method before any attempt to fetch a group (or you will be in an illegal state to call the group() method)
Give this a try:
String test = "Key1=value,Key2=value,Key3=value,Key4=value,Key5=value,Key6=value,Key7=value";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("((Key1)=(.*)),((Key2)=(.*)),((Key3)=(.*)),((Key4)=(.*)),((Key5)=(.*)),((Key6)=(.*)),((Key7)=(.*))");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(test);
matcher.find();
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
It's not wrong per se, but it requires a lot of backtracking which might cause the regular expression engine to bail. I would try a split as suggested elsewhere, but if you really need to use a regular expression, try making it non-greedy.
((Key1)=(.*?)),((Key2)=(.*?)),((Key3)=(.*?)),((Key4)=(.*?)),((Key5)=(.*?)),((Key6)=(.*?)),((Key7)=(.*?))
To understand why it requires so much backtracking, understand that for
Key1=(.*),Key2=(.*)
applied to
Key1=x,Key2=y
Java's regular expression engine matches the first (.*) to x,Key2=y and then tries stripping characters off the right until it can get a match for the rest of the regular expression: ,Key2=(.*). It effectively ends up asking,
Does "" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does "y" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does "=y" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does "2=y" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does "y2=y" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does "ey2=y" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does "Key2=y" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does ",Key2=y" match ,Key2=(.*), yes so the first .* is "x" and the second is "y".
EDIT:
In Java, the non-greedy qualifier changes things so that it starts off trying to match nothing and then building from there.
Does "x,Key2=(.*)" match ,Key2=(.*), no so try
Does ",Key2=(.*)" match ,Key2=(.*), yes.
So when you've got 7 keys it doesn't need to unmatch 6 of them which involves unmatching 5 which involves unmatching 4, .... It can do it's job in one forward pass over the input.
I'm not going to say that there's no regex that will work for this, but it's most likely more complicated to write (and more importantly, read, for the next person that has to deal with the code) than it's worth. The closest I'm able to get with a regex is if you append a terminal comma to the string you're matching, i.e, instead of:
"Key1=value1,Key2=value2"
you would append a comma so it's:
"Key1=value1,Key2=value2,"
Then, the regex that got me the closest is: "(?:(\\w+?)=(\\S+?),)?+"...but this doesn't quite work if the values have commas, though.
You can try to continue tweaking that regex from there, but the problem I found is that there's a conflict in the behavior between greedy and reluctant quantifiers. You'd have to specify a capturing group for the value that is greedy with respect to commas up to the last comma prior to an non-capturing group comprised of word characters followed by the equal sign (the next value)...and this last non-capturing group would have to be optional in case you're matching the last value in the sequence, and maybe itself reluctant. Complicated.
Instead, my advice is just to split the string on "=". You can get away with this because presumably the values aren't allowed to contain the equal sign character.
Now you'll have a bunch of substrings, each of which that is a bunch of characters that comprise a value, the last comma in the string, followed by a key. You can easily find the last comma in each substring using String.lastIndexOf(',').
Treat the first and last substrings specially (because the first one does not have a prepended value and the last one has no appended key) and you should be in business.
If you know you always have 7, the hack-of-least resistance is
^Key1=(.+),Key2=(.+),Key3=(.+),Key4=(.+),Key5=(.+),Key6=(.+),Key7=(.+)$
Try it out at http://www.fileformat.info/tool/regex.htm
I'm pretty sure that there is a better way to parse this thing down that goes through .find() rather than .matches() which I think I would recommend as it allows you to move down the string one key=value pair at a time. It moves you into the whole "greedy" evaluation discussion.
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use
regular expressions." Now they have two problems. - Jamie Zawinski
The simplest solution is the most robust.
final String data = "Key1=value,Key2=value,Key3=value,Key4=value,Key5=value,Key6=value,Key7=value";
final String[] pairs = data.split(",");
for (final String pair: pairs)
{
final String[] keyValue = pair.split("=");
final String key = keyValue[0];
final String value = keyValue[1];
}