I'm trying to create a proper regex for my problem and apparently ran into weird issue.
Let me describe what I'm trying to do..
My goal is to remove commas from both ends of the string. E,g, string , ,, ,,, , , Hello, my lovely, world, ,, , should become just Hello, my lovely, world.
I have prepared following regex to accomplish this:
(\w+,*? *?)+(?=(,?\W+$))
It works like a charm in regex validators, but when I'm trying to run it on Android device, matcher.find() function hangs for ~1min to find a proper match...
I assume, the problem is in positive lookahead I'm using, but I couldn't find any better solution than just trim commas separately from the beginning and at the end:
output = input.replaceAll("^(,?\\W?)+", ""); //replace commas at the beginning
output = output.replaceAll("(,?\\W?)+$", ""); //replace commas at the end
Is there something I am missing in positive lookahead in Java regex? How can I retrieve string section between commas at the beginning and at the end?
You don't have to use a lookahead if you use matching groups. Try regex ^[\s,]*(.+?)[\s,]*$:
EDIT: To break it apart, ^ matches the beginning of the line, which is technically redundant if using matches() but may be useful elsewhere. [\s,]* matches zero or more whitespace characters or commas, but greedily--it will accept as many characters as possible. (.+?) matches any string of characters, but the trailing question mark instructs it to match as few characters as possible (non-greedy), and also capture the contents to "group 1" as it forms the first set of parentheses. The non-greedy match allows the final group to contain the same zero-or-more commas or whitespaces ([\s,]*). Like the ^, the final $ matches the end of the line--useful for find() but redundant for matches().
If you need it to match spaces only, replace [\s,] with [ ,].
This should work:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^[\\s,]*(.+?)[\\s,]*$");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(", ,, ,,, , , Hello, my lovely, world, ,, ,");
if (!matcher.matches())
return null;
return matcher.group(1); // "Hello, my lovely, world"
Related
I need to replace ALL characters that don't follow a pattern with "".
I have strings like:
MCC-QX-1081
TEF-CO-QX-4949
SPARE-QX-4500
So far the closest I am using the following regex.
String regex = "[^QX,-,\\d]";
Using the replaceAll String method I get QX1081 and the expected result is QX-1081
You're using a character class which matches single characters, not patterns.
You want something like
String resultString = subjectString.replaceAll("^.*?(QX-\\d+)?$", "$1");
which works as long as nothing follows the QX-digits part in your strings.
Put the dash at the end of the regex: [^QX,\d-]
Next you just have to substring to filter out the first dash.
Don't know exactly what you expect for all strings but if you want to match a dash in a character class then it must be set as last character.
You are using a character class where you have to either escape the hyphen or put it at the start or at the end like [^QX,\d-] or else you are matching a range from a comma to a comma. But changing that will give you -QX-1081 which is not the desired result.
You could match your pattern and then replace with the first capturing group $1:
^(?:[A-Z]+-)+(QX-\d+)$
In Java you have to double escape matching a digit \\d
That will match:
^ Start of the string
(?:[A-Z]+-)+ Repeat 1+ times one or more uppercase charactacters followed by a hyphen
(QX-\d+) Capture in a group QX- followed by 1+ digits
$ End of the string
For example:
String result = "MCC-QX-1081".replaceAll("^(?:[A-Z]+-)+(QX-\\d+)$", "$1");
System.out.println(result); // QX-1081
See the Regex demo | Java demo
Note that if you are doing just 1 replacement, you could also use replaceFirst
I want to get words from string that starts with # and end with space. I've tried using this Pattern.compile("#\\s*(\\w+)") but it doesn't include characters like ' or :.
I want the solution with only Pattern Matching method.
We can try matching using the pattern (?<=\\s|^)#\\S+, which would match any word starting with #, followed by any number of non whitespace characters.
String line = "Here is a #hashtag and here is #another has tag.";
String pattern = "(?<=\\s|^)#\\S+";
Pattern r = Pattern.compile(pattern);
Matcher m = r.matcher(line);
while (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group(0));
}
#hashtag
#another
Demo
Note: The above solution might give you an edge case of pulling in punctuation which appears at the end of a hashtag. If you don't want this, then we can rephrase the regex to only match positive certain characters, e.g. letters and numbers. But, maybe this is not a concern for you.
The opposite of \s is \S, so you can use a regex like this:
#\s*(\S+)
Or for Java:
Pattern.compile("#\\s*(\\S+)")
It will capture anything that is not a white space.
See demo here.
If you want to stop on the space character and not any white space change the \S to [^ ].
The ^ inside the brackets means it will negate whatever comes after it.
Pattern.compile("#\\s*([^ ]+)")
See demo here.
I want to fetch
http://d1oiazdc2hzjcz.cloudfront.net/promotions/precious/2x/p_608_o_6288_precious_image_1419866866.png
from
url(http://d1oiazdc2hzjcz.cloudfront.net/promotions/precious/2x/p_608_o_6288_precious_image_1419866866.png)
I have tried this code:
String a = "";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("url(.*)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(imgpath);
if (matcher.find()) {
a = (matcher.group(1));
}
return a;
but a == (http://d1oiazdc2hzjcz.cloudfront.net/promotions/precious/2x/p_639_o_4746_precious_image_1419867529.png)
how can I fine tune it?
Why use a regular expression to begin with?
Given
final String s = "url(http://d1oiazdc2hzjcz.cloudfront.net/promotions/precious/2x/p_608_o_6288_precious_image_1419866866.png)";
If the string is always the same format a simple substring(4,s.length()-1) would be better.
That said, if you insist on a regular expression:
You have to escape the ( with \( so in Java ( you have to escape the \ ) it would be \\( same with the ).
Then you can get the grouping with url\\((.+)\\), test it here!
Learn to use RegEx101.com before coming here, it will point out errors like this immediately.
As you already seem to know ( and )` represents groups which means that in regex
url(.*)
(.*) will place everything after url in group 1, which in case of
url(http://d1oiazdc2hzjcz.cloudfront.net/promotions/precious/2x/p_608_o_6288_precious_image_1419866866.png)
will be
(http://d1oiazdc2hzjcz.cloudfront.net/promotions/precious/2x/p_608_o_6288_precious_image_1419866866.png)
If you want to exclude ( and ) from match you need to add their literals to regex, which means you need to escape them. There are many things to do it, like adding \ before each of them, or surrounding them with [ ].
Other problem with your regex is that .* finds maximal potential match but since . represents any character (except line separators) it can also include ( and ). To solve this problem you can make * quantifier reluctant by adding ? after it so your final regex can be written as string
"url\\((.*?)\\)"
---------------
url
\\( - ( literal
(.*?) - group 1
\\) - ) literal
or you can use instead of . character class which will accept all characters except ) like
"url\\(([^)]*)\\)"
Try this regex:
url\((.*?)\)
The outermost parentheses are escaped so they will be matched literally. The inner parentheses are for capturing a group. The question mark after the .* is to make the match lazy, so the first closing parenthesis found will end the group.
Note that to use this regex in Java, you'll have to additionally escape the backslashes in order to express the above regex as a string literal:
String regex = "url\\((.*?)\\)";
You need to escape the () to match the parenthesis in the string, and then add another set of () around the part you want to pull out in group 1, the actual url. I also changed the part inside the parenthesis to [^)]*, which will match everything until it finds a ). See below:
url\(([^)]*)\)
I'm trying to match Strings that contain the word "#SP" (sans quotes, case insensitive) in Java. However, I'm finding using Regexes very difficult!
Strings I need to match:
"This is a sample #sp string",
"#SP string text...",
"String text #Sp"
Strings I do not want to match:
"Anything with #Spider",
"#Spin #Spoon #SPORK"
Here's what I have so far: http://ideone.com/B7hHkR .Could someone guide me through building my regexp?
I've also tried: "\\w*\\s*#sp\\w*\\s*" to no avail.
Edit: Here's the code from IDEone:
java.util.regex.Pattern p =
java.util.regex.Pattern.compile("\\b#SP\\b",
java.util.regex.Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
java.util.regex.Matcher m = p.matcher("s #SP s");
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Match!");
}
(edit: positive lookbehind not needed, only matching is done, not replacement)
You are yet another victim of Java's misnamed regex matching methods.
.matches() quite unfortunately so tries to match the whole input, which is a clear violation of the definition of "regex matching" (a regex can match anywhere in the input). The method you need to use is .find().
This is a braindead API, and unfortunately Java is not the only language having such misguided method names. Python also pleads guilty.
Also, you have the problem that \\b will detect on word boundaries and # is not part of a word. You need to use an alternation detecting either the beginning of input or a space.
Your code would need to look like this (non fully qualified classes):
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(^|\\s)#SP\\b", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher("s #SP s");
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Match!");
}
You're doing fine, but the \b in front of the # is misleading. \b is a word boundary, but # is already not a word character (i.e. it isn't in the set [0-9A-Za-z_]). Therefore, the space before the # isn't considered a word boundary. Change to:
java.util.regex.Pattern p =
java.util.regex.Pattern.compile("(^|\\s)#SP\\b",
java.util.regex.Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
The (^|\s) means: match either ^ OR \s, where ^ means the beginning of your string (e.g. "#SP String"), and \s means a whitespace character.
The regular expression "\\w*\\s*#sp\\w*\s*" will match 0 or more words, followed by 0 or more spaces, followed by #sp, followed by 0 or more words, followed by 0 or more spaces. My suggestion is to not use \s* to break words up in your expression, instead, use \b.
"(^|\b)#sp(\b|$)"
I'm trying to compare following strings with regex:
#[xyz="1","2"'"4"] ------- valid
#[xyz] ------------- valid
#[xyz="a5","4r"'"8dsa"] -- valid
#[xyz="asd"] -- invalid
#[xyz"asd"] --- invalid
#[xyz="8s"'"4"] - invalid
The valid pattern should be:
#[xyz then = sign then some chars then , then some chars then ' then some chars and finally ]. This means if there is characters after xyz then they must be in format ="XXX","XXX"'"XXX".
Or only #[xyz]. No character after xyz.
I have tried following regex, but it did not worked:
String regex = "#[xyz=\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\",\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"'\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"]";
Here the quotations (in part after xyz) are optional and number of characters between quotes are also not fixed and there could also be some characters before and after this pattern like asdadad #[xyz] adadad.
You can use the regex:
#\[xyz(?:="[a-zA-z0-9]+","[a-zA-z0-9]+"'"[a-zA-z0-9]+")?\]
See it
Expressed as Java string it'll be:
String regex = "#\\[xyz=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"\\]";
What was wrong with your regex?
[...] defines a character class. When you want to match literal [ and ] you need to escape it by preceding with a \.
[a-zA-z][0-9] match a single letter followed by a single digit. But you want one or more alphanumeric characters. So you need [a-zA-Z0-9]+
Use this:
String regex = "#\\[xyz(=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")?\\]";
When you write [a-zA-z][0-9] it expects a letter character and a digit after it. And you also have to escape first and last square braces because square braces have special meaning in regexes.
Explanation:
[a-zA-z0-9]+ means alphanumeric character (but not an underline) one or more times.
(=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")? means that expression in parentheses can be one time or not at all.
Since square brackets have a special meaning in regex, you used it by yourself, they define character classes, you need to escape them if you want to match them literally.
String regex = "#\\[xyz=\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\",\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"'\"[a-zA-z][0-9]\"\\]";
The next problem is with '"[a-zA-z][0-9]' you define "first a letter, second a digit", you need to join those classes and add a quantifier:
String regex = "#\\[xyz=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"\\]";
See it here on Regexr
there could also be some characters before and after this pattern like
asdadad #[xyz] adadad.
Regex should be:
String regex = "(.)*#\\[xyz(=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")?\\](.)*";
The First and last (.)* will allow any string before the pattern as you have mentioned in your edit. As said by #ademiban this (=\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\",\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\"'\"[a-zA-z0-9]+\")? will come one time or not at all. Other mistakes are also very well explained by Others +1 to all other.