Develop Reference

Splitting string on spaces unless in double quotes but double quotes can have a preceding string attached

I need to split a string in Java (first remove whitespaces between quotes and then split at whitespaces.)
"abc test=\"x y z\" magic=\" hello \" hola"
becomes:
firstly:
"abc test=\"xyz\" magic=\"hello\" hola"
and then:
abc
test="xyz"
magic="hello"
hola
Scenario :
I am getting a string something like above from input and I want to break it into parts as above. One way to approach was first remove the spaces between quotes and then split at spaces. Also string before quotes complicates it. Second one was split at spaces but not if inside quote and then remove spaces from individual split. I tried capturing quotes with "\"([^\"]+)\"" but I'm not able to capture just the spaces inside quotes. I tried some more but no luck.

We can do this using a formal pattern matcher. The secret sauce of the answer below is to use the not-much-used Matcher#appendReplacement method. We pause at each match, and then append a custom replacement of anything appearing inside two pairs of quotes. The custom method removeSpaces() strips all whitespace from each quoted term.
public static String removeSpaces(String input) {
return input.replaceAll("\\s+", "");
}
String input = "abc test=\"x y z\" magic=\" hello \" hola";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\"(.*?)\"");
Matcher m = p.matcher(input);
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("");
while (m.find()) {
m.appendReplacement(sb, "\"" + removeSpaces(m.group(1)) + "\"");
}
m.appendTail(sb);
String[] parts = sb.toString().split("\\s+");
for (String part : parts) {
System.out.println(part);
}
abc
test="xyz"
magic="hello"
hola
Demo
The big caveat here, as the above comments hinted at, is that we are really using a regex engine as a rudimentary parser. To see where my solution would fail fast, just remove one of the quotes by accident from a quoted term. But, if you are sure you input is well formed as you have showed us, this answer might work for you.

I wanted to mention the java 9's Matcher.replaceAll lambda extension:
// Find quoted strings and remove there whitespace:
s = Pattern.compile("\"[^\"]*\"").matcher(s)
.replaceAll(mr -> mr.group().replaceAll("\\s", ""));
// Turn the remaining whitespace in a comma and brace all.
s = '{' + s.trim().replaceAll("\\s+", ", ") + '}';

Probably the other answer is better but still I have written it so I will post it here ;) It takes a different approach
public static void main(String[] args) {
String test="abc test=\"x y z\" magic=\" hello \" hola";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("([^\\\"]+=\\\"[^\\\"]+\\\" )");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(test);
int lastIndex=0;
while(matcher.find()) {
String[] parts=matcher.group(0).trim().split("=");
boolean newLine=false;
for (String string : parts[0].split("\\s+")) {
if(newLine)
System.out.println();
newLine=true;
System.out.print(string);
}
System.out.println("="+parts[1].replaceAll("\\s",""));
lastIndex=matcher.end();
}
System.out.println(test.substring(lastIndex).trim());
}
Result is
abc
test="xyz"
magic="hello"
hola

It sounds like you want to write a basic parser/Tokenizer. My bet is that after you make something that can deal with pretty printing in this structure, you will soon want to start validating that there arn't any mis-matching "'s.
But in essence, you have a few stages for this particular problem, and Java has a built in tokenizer that can prove useful.
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.StringTokenizer;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;
public class Q50151376{
private static class Whitespace{
Whitespace(){ }
#Override
public String toString() {
return "\n";
}
}
private static class QuotedString {
public final String string;
QuotedString(String string) {
this.string = "\"" + string.trim() + "\"";
}
#Override
public String toString() {
return string;
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
String test = "abc test=\"x y z\" magic=\" hello \" hola";
StringTokenizer tokenizer = new StringTokenizer(test, "\"");
boolean inQuotes = false;
List<Object> out = new LinkedList<>();
while (tokenizer.hasMoreTokens()) {
final String token = tokenizer.nextToken();
if (inQuotes) {
out.add(new QuotedString(token));
} else {
out.addAll(TokenizeWhitespace(token));
}
inQuotes = !inQuotes;
}
System.out.println(joinAsStrings(out));
}
private static String joinAsStrings(List<Object> out) {
return out.stream()
.map(Object::toString)
.collect(Collectors.joining());
}
public static List<Object> TokenizeWhitespace(String in){
List<Object> out = new LinkedList<>();
StringTokenizer tokenizer = new StringTokenizer(in, " ", true);
boolean ignoreWhitespace = false;
while (tokenizer.hasMoreTokens()){
String token = tokenizer.nextToken();
boolean whitespace = token.equals(" ");
if(!whitespace){
out.add(token);
ignoreWhitespace = false;
} else if(!ignoreWhitespace) {
out.add(new Whitespace());
ignoreWhitespace = true;
}
}
return out;
}
}

Extract a specific word from a text in java

I want to extract a particular word from a text using Java. Is it possible
e.g. :
String str = "this is 009876 birthday of mine";
I want to get '009876' from above text in Java. Is this possible ?

You can do it easily by regex. Below is an example:
import java.util.regex.*;
class Test {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String hello = "this is 009876 birthday of mine";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("009876");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(hello);
int count = 0;
while (matcher.find())
count++;
System.out.println(count); // prints 1
}
}
If you want to check if the text contains the source string (e.g. "009876") you can do it simply by contains method of String as shown in below example:
public static String search() {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
String text = "this is 009876 birthday of mine";
String source = "009876";
if(text.contains(source))
return text;
else
return text;
}
Let me know if any issue.

You can do it like this:
class ExtractDesiredString{
static String extractedString;
public static void main(String[] args) {
String hello = "this is 009876 birthday of mine";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("009876");
if (hello.contains(pattern.toString())) {
extractedString = pattern.toString();
}else{
Assert.fail("Given string doesn't contain desired text")
}
}
}

java tokenizer for strings

I have a text file and want to tokenize its lines -- but only the sentences with the # character.
For example, given...
Buah... Molt bon concert!! #Postconcert #gintonic
...I want to print only #Postconcert #gintonic.
I have already tried this code with some changes...
public class MyTokenizer {
/**
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
tokenize("Europe3.txt","allo.txt");
}
public static void tokenize(String sFile,String sFileOut) {
String sLine="", sToken="";
MyBufferedReaderWriter f = new MyBufferedReaderWriter();
f.openRFile(sFile);
MyBufferedReaderWriter fOut = new MyBufferedReaderWriter();
fOut.openWFile(sFileOut);
while ((sLine=f.readLine()) != null) {
//StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(sLine, "#");
String[] tokens = sLine.split("\\#");
for (String token : tokens)
{
fOut.writeLine(token);
//System.out.println(token);
}
/*while (st.hasMoreTokens()) {
sToken = st.nextToken();
System.out.println(sToken);
}*/
}
f.closeRFile();
}
}
Can anyone help?

You can try something like with Regex:
package com.stackoverflow.answers;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class HashExtractor {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String strInput = "Buah... Molt bon concert!! #Postconcert #gintonic";
String strPattern = "(?:\\s|\\A)[##]+([A-Za-z0-9-_]+)";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(strPattern);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(strInput);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group());
}
}
}

As per the given example, when using the split() function the values would be stored something like this:
tokens[0]=Buah... Molt bon concert!!
tokens[1]=Postconcert
tokens[2]=gintonic
So you just need to skip first value and append '#' (if you need that in your other) to the other string values.
Hope this helps.

You have not specially asked for this, but I assume you try to extract all the #hashtags from your textfile.
To do this, Regex is your friend:
String text = "Buah... Molt bon concert!! #Postconcert #gintonic";
System.out.println(getHashTags(text));
public Collection<String> getHashTags(String text) {
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(#\\w+)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
Set<String> htags = new HashSet();
while (matcher.find()) {
htags.add(matcher.group(1));
}
return htags;
}
Compile a pattern like this #\w+, everything that starts with a # followed by one or more (+) word character (\w).
Then we have to escape the \ for java with a \\.
And finally put this expression in a group to get access to the matched text by surrounding it with braces (#\w+).
For every match, add the first matched group to the set htags, finally we get a set with all the hashtags in it.
[#gintonic, #Postconcert]

How do you replace groups in a regular expression?

How, exactly, do you replace groups while appending them to a string buffer?
For Example:
(a)(b)(c)
How can you replace group 1 with d, group 2 with e and so on?
I'm working with the Java regex engine.
Thanks in advance.

You could use Matcher's appendReplacement
Here is an example sample using:
input: "hello bob How is your cat?"
regular expression: "(bob|cat)"
output: "hello alice How is your dog"
public static void main(String[] args) {
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(bob|cat)");
Matcher m = p.matcher("hello bob How is your cat?");
StringBuffer s = new StringBuffer();
while (m.find()) {
m.appendReplacement(s, doReplace(m.group(1)));
}
m.appendTail(s);
System.out.println(s.toString());
}
public static String doReplace(String s) {
if(s.equals("bob")) {
return "alice";
}
if(s.equals("cat")) {
return "dog";
}
return "";
}

You could use Matcher#start(group) and Matcher#end(group) to build a generic replacement method:
public static String replaceGroup(String regex, String source, int groupToReplace, String replacement) {
return replaceGroup(regex, source, groupToReplace, 1, replacement);
}
public static String replaceGroup(String regex, String source, int groupToReplace, int groupOccurrence, String replacement) {
Matcher m = Pattern.compile(regex).matcher(source);
for (int i = 0; i < groupOccurrence; i++)
if (!m.find()) return source; // pattern not met, may also throw an exception here
return new StringBuilder(source).replace(m.start(groupToReplace), m.end(groupToReplace), replacement).toString();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
// replace with "%" what was matched by group 1
// input: aaa123ccc
// output: %123ccc
System.out.println(replaceGroup("([a-z]+)([0-9]+)([a-z]+)", "aaa123ccc", 1, "%"));
// replace with "!!!" what was matched the 4th time by the group 2
// input: a1b2c3d4e5
// output: a1b2c3d!!!e5
System.out.println(replaceGroup("([a-z])(\\d)", "a1b2c3d4e5", 2, 4, "!!!"));
}
Check online demo here.

Are you looking for something like this?
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class Program1 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(a)(b)(c)");
String str = "111abc222abc333";
String out = null;
Matcher m = p.matcher(str);
out = m.replaceAll("z$3y$2x$1");
System.out.println(out);
}
}
This gives 111zcybxa222zcybxa333 as output.
I guess you will see what this example does.
But OK, I think there's no ready built-in
method through which you can say e.g.:
- replace group 3 with zzz
- replace group 2 with yyy
- replace group 1 with xxx

How to split a string in java based on a regex?

I have data as follows:
String s = "foo.com^null^[]";
String s1 = "bar.com^null^[{\"seen_first\":1357882827,\"seen_last\":1357882827,\"_id\":\"93.170.52.31\",\"exclude_from_publication\":false,\"locked\":false,\"agent\":\"domain_export\",\"web_published\":true,\"version\":\"IPv4\"},{\"seen_first\":1357882827,\"seen_last\":1357882827,\"_id\":\"93.170.52.21\",\"exclude_from_publication\":false,\"locked\":false,\"agent\":\"domain_export\",\"web_published\":true,\"version\":\"IPv4\"}]";
And note that third field.. it can be either [] or a json array.
And I am trying to parse these fields..
Here is my current attempt.
public static void check(String s) {
String [] tokens = s.split("^");
System.out.println(tokens[0]);
System.out.println(tokens[1]);
System.out.println(tokens[2]);
if (tokens[2].trim().equals("[]")) {
System.out.println("here--> " +true);
}
System.out.println("---------");
}
What am i doing wrong?

^ is a metacharacter in a regex, meaning "the start of the string". You need to escape it:
String [] tokens = s.split("\\^");