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Search substring in a string using regex

I'm trying to search for a set of words, contained within an ArrayList(terms_1pers), inside a string and, since the precondition is that before and after the search word there should be no letters, I thought of using expression regular.
I just don't know what I'm doing wrong using the matches operator. In the code reported, if the matching is not verified, it writes to an external file.
String url = csvRecord.get("url");
String text = csvRecord.get("review");
String var = null;
for(String term : terms_1pers)
{
if(!text.matches("[^a-z]"+term+"[^a-z]"))
{
var="true";
}
}
if(!var.equals("true"))
{
bw.write(url+";"+text+"\n");
}

In order to find regex matches, you should use the regex classes. Pattern and Matcher.
String term = "term";
ArrayList<String> a = new ArrayList<String>();
a.add("123term456"); //true
a.add("A123Term5"); //false
a.add("term456"); //true
a.add("123term"); //true
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("^[^A-Za-z]*(" + term + ")[^A-Za-z]*$");
for(String text : a) {
Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Found: " + m.group(1) );
//since the term you are adding is the second matchable portion, you're looking for group(1)
}
else System.out.println("No match for: " + term);
}
}
In the example there, we create an instance of a https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html to find matches in the text you are matching against.
Note that I adjusted the regex a bit. The choice in this code excludes all letters A-Z and the lowercase versions from the initial matching part. It will also allow for situations where there are no characters at all before or after the match term. If you need to have something there, use + instead of *. I also limited the regex to force the match to only contain matches for these three groups by using ^ and $ to verify end the end of the matching text. If this doesn't fit your use case, you may need to adjust.
To demonstrate using this with a variety of different terms:
ArrayList<String> terms = new ArrayList<String>();
terms.add("term");
terms.add("the book is on the table");
terms.add("1981 was the best year ever!");
ArrayList<String> a = new ArrayList<String>();
a.add("123term456");
a.add("A123Term5");
a.add("the book is on the table456");
a.add("1##!231981 was the best year ever!9#");
for (String term: terms) {
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("^[^A-Za-z]*(" + term + ")[^A-Za-z]*$");
for(String text : a) {
Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Found: " + m.group(1) + " in " + text);
//since the term you are adding is the second matchable portion, you're looking for group(1)
}
else System.out.println("No match for: " + term + " in " + text);
}
}
Output for this is:
Found: term in 123term456
No match for: term in A123Term5
No match for: term in the book is on the table456....
In response to the question about having String term being case insensitive, here's a way that we can build a string by taking advantage of java.lang.Character to options for upper and lower case letters.
String term = "This iS the teRm.";
String matchText = "123This is the term.";
StringBuilder str = new StringBuilder();
str.append("^[^A-Za-z]*(");
for (int i = 0; i < term.length(); i++) {
char c = term.charAt(i);
if (Character.isLetter(c))
str.append("(" + Character.toLowerCase(c) + "|" + Character.toUpperCase(c) + ")");
else str.append(c);
}
str.append(")[^A-Za-z]*$");
System.out.println(str.toString());
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(str.toString());
Matcher m = p.matcher(matchText);
if (m.find()) System.out.println("Found!");
else System.out.println("Not Found!");
This code outputs two lines, the first line is the regex string that's being compiled in the Pattern. "^[^A-Za-z]*((t|T)(h|H)(i|I)(s|S) (i|I)(s|S) (t|T)(h|H)(e|E) (t|T)(e|E)(r|R)(m|M).)[^A-Za-z]*$" This adjusted regex allows for letters in the term to be matched regardless of case. The second output line is "Found!" because the mixed case term is found within matchText.

There are several things to note:
matches requires a full string match, so [^a-z]term[^a-z] will only match a string like :term.. You need to use .find() to find partial matches
If you pass a literal string to a regex, you need to Pattern.quote it, or if it contains special chars, it will not get matched
To check if a word has some pattern before or after or at the start/end, you should either use alternations with anchors (like (?:^|[^a-z]) or (?:$|[^a-z])) or lookarounds, (?<![a-z]) and (?![a-z]).
To match any letter just use \p{Alpha} or - if you plan to match any Unicode letter - \p{L}.
The var variable is more logical to set to Boolean type.
Fixed code:
String url = csvRecord.get("url");
String text = csvRecord.get("review");
Boolean var = false;
for(String term : terms_1pers)
{
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(?<!\\p{L})" + Pattern.quote(term) + "(?!\\p{L})").matcher(text);
// If the search must be case insensitive use
// Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(?i)(?<!\\p{L})" + Pattern.quote(term) + "(?!\\p{L})").matcher(text);
if(!m.find())
{
var = true;
}
}
if (!var) {
bw.write(url+";"+text+"\n");
}

you did not consider the case where the start and end may contain letters
so adding .* at the front and end should solve your problem.
for(String term : terms_1pers)
{
if( text.matches(".*[^a-zA-Z]+" + term + "[^a-zA-Z]+.*)" )
{
var="true";
break; //exit the loop
}
}
if(!var.equals("true"))
{
bw.write(url+";"+text+"\n");
}

Java Regex expression not working

I have a problem with not working REGEX. I dont know what I am doing wrong. My code:
String test = "timetable:xxxxxtimetable:; timetable: fullihhghtO;";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\btimetable:(.*);");
//also tried "timetable:(.*);" and "(\\btimetable:)(.*)(;)"
Matcher m = p.matcher(test);
while(m.find()) {
System.out.println("S:" + m.start() + ", E:" + m.end());
System.out.println("x: "+ test.substring(m.start(), m.end()));
}
Expected result:
(1) "timetable:xxxxxtimetable:"
(2) "timetable: fullihhghtO"
I thanks for any help.

A non-capturing group could be handy in our case:
String test = "timetable:xxxxxtimetable:; timetable: fullihhghtO;";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(?:\\btimetable:(.*?);)+"); // <-- here
Matcher m = p.matcher(test);
int i = 1;
while (m.find()) {
System.out.println(i + ") "+ m.group(1));
i++;
}
OUTPUT
1) xxxxxtimetable:
2) fullihhghtO
Regex explained:
(?:\\btimetable:(.*?);)+ by using the non-capturing (?:\\btimetable:...) we'll consume the "timetable:" without capturing it, then the second matching group (.*?) captures what we want to capture (everything between \btimetable: and ;). Pay special attention to the non-greedy term: .*? which means that we'll consume the minimum possible amount of characters until the ;. If we won't use this lazy form, the regex will use "greedy" default mode and will consume all the characters until the last ; in the string!
Now, all that is relevant if you wanted to catch only the unique part, but if you wanted to catch the whole thing:
1) timetable:xxxxxtimetable:;
2) timetable: fullihhghtO;
It can be done easily by modifying the line with the regex to:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\b(timetable:.*?;)+");
which is even simpler: only one capturing group (see that we still have to use the non-greedy mode!).

You don't need to use regex, a simple split would do it :
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
String test = "timetable:xxxxxtimetable:; timetable: fullihhghtO;";
String[] array = test.split(";");
String str1 = array[0].trim();
String str2 = array[1].trim();
System.out.println(str1 + "\n" + str2); //timetable:xxxxxtimetable:
//timetable: fullihhghtO
}

Regular expression to remove everything but words. java

This code doesn't seem doing the right job. It removes the spaces between the words!
input = scan.nextLine().replaceAll("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "");
I want to remove all extra spaces and all numbers or abbreviations from a string, except words and this character: '.
For Example:
input: 34 4fF$##D one 233 r # o'clock 329riewio23
returns: one o'clock

public static String filter(String input) {
return input.replaceAll("[^A-Za-z0-9' ]", "").replaceAll(" +", " ");
}
The first replace replaces all characters except alphabetic characters, the single-quote, and spaces. The second replace replaces all instances of one or more spaces, with a single space.

Your solution doesn't work because you don't replace numbers and you also replace the ' character.
Check out this solution:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[^| ][A-Za-z']{2,} ");
String input = scan.nextLine();
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
while (matcher.find()) {
result.append(matcher.group());
}
System.out.println(result.toString());
It looks for the beginning of the string or a space ([^| ]) and then takes all the following characters ([A-Za-z']). However, it only takes the word if there are 2 or more charactes ({2,}) and there has to be a trailing space.

If you want to just extract that time information use this regex group match:
input = scan.nextLine();
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("([a-zA-Z]{3,})\\s.*?(o'clock)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(input);
if (m.find()) {
input = m.group(1) + " " + m.group(2);
}
The regex is quite naive though, and will only work if the input is always of a similar format.

Get the last index of a letter followed by numeric

I'm trying to parse a URL and I'd like to test for the last index of a couple characters followed by a numeric value.
Example
used-cell-phone-albany-m3359_l12201
I'm trying to determine if the last "-m" is followed by a numeric value.
So something like this, "used-cell-phone-albany-m3359_l12201".contains("m" followed by numeric)
I'm assuming it needs to be done with regular expressions, but I'm not for sure.

You could use a pattern like [a-z]\\d which searches for any numbers which appear next to a character between a-z, you can specify other characters within the group if you wish...
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[a-z]\\d", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("used-cell-phone-albany-m3359_l12201");
while (matcher.find()) {
int startIndex = matcher.start();
int endIndex = matcher.end();
String match = matcher.group();
System.out.println(startIndex + "-" + endIndex + " = " + match);
}
The problem is, your test String actually contains two matches m3 and l1
The above example will display
23-25 = m3
29-31 = l1
Updated with feedback
If you can guarantee the marker (ie -m), then it comes a lot simpler...
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("-m\\d", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("used-cell-phone-albany-m3359_l12201");
if (matcher.find()) {
int startIndex = matcher.start();
int endIndex = matcher.end();
String match = matcher.group();
System.out.println(startIndex + "-" + endIndex + " = " + match);
}

In Java, convert the URL to a String if necessary and then run
URLString.match("^.*m[0-9]+$").
Only if that returns true, then the URL ends with "m" followed by a number. That can be refined with a more precise ending pattern. The reason this regex tests the pattern at the end of the string is because $ in a regex matches the end of the string; "[0-9]+" matches a sequencs of one or more numerical digits; "^" matches the beginning of the string; and ".*" matches zero or more arbitrary but printable characters including white space, letters, numbers and puctuation marks.
To determine if the last "m" is followed by a number then use
URLString.match("^.+?m[0-9].*$")
Here ".+?" greedily matches all characters up to the very last "m".

Why this code don't work properly?

Why this code:
String keyword = "pattern";
String text = "sometextpatternsometext";
String patternStr = "^.*" + keyword + ".*$"; //
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternStr, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
while (matcher.find()) {
int start = matcher.start();
int end = matcher.end();
System.out.println("start = " + start + ", end = " + end);
}
start = 0, end = 23
don't work properly.
But, this code:
String keyword = "pattern";
String text = "sometext pattern sometext";
String patternStr = "\\b" + keyword + "\\b"; //
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternStr, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
while (matcher.find()) {
int start = matcher.start();
int end = matcher.end();
System.out.println("start = " + start + ", end = " + end);
}
start = 9, end = 16
work fine.

It does work. Your pattern
^.*pattern.*$
says to match:
start at the beginning
accept any number of characters
followed by the string pattern
followed by any number of characters
until the end of the string
The result is the entire input string. If you wanted to find only the word pattern, then the regex would be just the word by itself, or as you found, bracketed with word-boundary metacharacters.

It is not that the first example didn't work, it is that you inadvertently asked it to match more than you meant.
The .* expressions expand to contain all the characters before "pattern" and all the characters after pattern, so the whole expression matches the whole line.
With your second example, you only specify that it match a blank space before and after "pattern" so the expression matches mostly pattern, plus a couple of spaces.

The problem is in your regex: "^.*" + keyword + ".*$"
The expression .* matches as many characters as there are in the string. It means that it actually matches whole string. After the whole string it cannot find your keyword.
To make it working you have to make it greedy, i.e. add question sign after .*:
"^.*?" + keyword + ".*$"
This time .*? matches minimum characters followed by your keyword.