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How to parse string using regex

I'm pretty new to java, trying to find a way to do this better. Potentially using a regex.
String text = test.get(i).toString()
// text looks like this in string form:
// EnumOption[enumId=test,id=machine]
String checker = text.replace("[","").replace("]","").split(",")[1].split("=")[1];
// checker becomes machine
My goal is to parse that text string and just return back machine. Which is what I did in the code above.
But that looks ugly. I was wondering what kinda regex can be used here to make this a little better? Or maybe another suggestion?

Use a regex' lookbehind:
(?<=\bid=)[^],]*
See Regex101.
(?<= ) // Start matching only after what matches inside
\bid= // Match "\bid=" (= word boundary then "id="),
[^],]* // Match and keep the longest sequence without any ']' or ','
In Java, use it like this:
import java.util.regex.*;
class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(?<=\\bid=)[^],]*");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("EnumOption[enumId=test,id=machine]");
if (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(0));
}
}
}
This results in
machine

Assuming you’re using the Polarion ALM API, you should use the EnumOption’s getId method instead of deparsing and re-parsing the value via a string:
String id = test.get(i).getId();

Using the replace and split functions don't take the structure of the data into account.
If you want to use a regex, you can just use a capturing group without any lookarounds, where enum can be any value except a ] and comma, and id can be any value except ].
The value of id will be in capture group 1.
\bEnumOption\[enumId=[^=,\]]+,id=([^\]]+)\]
Explanation
\bEnumOption Match EnumOption preceded by a word boundary
\[enumId= Match [enumId=
[^=,\]]+, Match 1+ times any char except = , and ]
id= Match literally
( Capture group 1
[^\]]+ Match 1+ times any char except ]
)\]
Regex demo | Java demo
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\bEnumOption\\[enumId=[^=,\\]]+,id=([^\\]]+)\\]");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("EnumOption[enumId=test,id=machine]");
if (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
Output
machine
If there can be more comma separated values, you could also only match id making use of negated character classes [^][]* before and after matching id to stay inside the square bracket boundaries.
\bEnumOption\[[^][]*\bid=([^,\]]+)[^][]*\]
In Java
String regex = "\\bEnumOption\\[[^][]*\\bid=([^,\\]]+)[^][]*\\]";
Regex demo

A regex can of course be used, but sometimes is less performant, less readable and more bug-prone.
I would advise you not use any regex that you did not come up with yourself, or at least understand completely.
PS: I think your solution is actually quite readable.
Here's another non-regex version:
String text = "EnumOption[enumId=test,id=machine]";
text = text.substring(text.lastIndexOf('=') + 1);
text = text.substring(0, text.length() - 1);
Not doing you a favor, but the downvote hurt, so here you go:
String input = "EnumOption[enumId=test,id=machine]";
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("EnumOption\\[enumId=(.+),id=(.+)\\]").matcher(input);
if(!matcher.matches()) {
throw new RuntimeException("unexpected input: " + input);
}
System.out.println("enumId: " + matcher.group(1));
System.out.println("id: " + matcher.group(2));

Regular expression to handle two different file extensions

I am trying to create a regular expression that takes a file of name
"abcd_04-04-2020.txt" or "abcd_04-04-2020.txt.gz"
How can I handle the "OR" condition for the extension. This is what I have so far
if(fileName.matches("([\\w._-]+[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}.[a-zA-Z]{3})")){
Pattern.compile("[._]+[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}\\.");
}
This handles only the .txt. How can I handle ".txt.gz"
Thanks

Why not just use endsWith instead complex regex
if(fileName.endsWith(".txt") || fileName.endsWith(".txt.gz")){
Pattern.compile("[._]+[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}\\.");
}

You can use the below regex to achieve your purpose:
^[\w-]+\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4}\.txt(?:\.gz)?$
Explanation of the above regex:]
^,$ - Matches start and end of the test string resp.
[\w-]+ - Matches word character along with hyphen one or more times.
\d{} - Matches digits as many numbers as mentioned in the curly braces.
(?:\.gz)? - Represents non-capturing group matching .gz zero or one time because of ? quantifier. You could have used | alternation( or as you were expecting OR) but this is legible and more efficient too.
You can find the demo of the above regex here.
IMPLEMENTATION IN JAVA:
import java.util.regex.*;
public class Main
{
private static final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^[\\w-]+\\d{2}-\\d{2}-\\d{4}\\.txt(?:\\.gz)?$", Pattern.MULTILINE);
public static void main(String[] args) {
String testString = "abcd_04-04-2020.txt\nabcd_04-04-2020.txt.gz\nsomethibsnfkns_05-06-2020.txt\n.txt.gz";
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(testString);
while(matcher.find()){
System.out.println(matcher.group(0));
}
}
}
You can find the implementation of the above regex in java in here.
NOTE: If you want to match for valid dates also; please visit this.

You can replace .[a-zA-Z]{3} with .txt(\.gz)
if(fileName.matches("([\\w._-]+[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}).txt(\.gz)?")){
Pattern.compile("[._]+[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}\\.");
}

? will work for your required | . Try adding
(.[a-zA-Z]{2})?
to your original regex
([\w._-]+[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}.[a-zA-Z]{3}(.[a-zA-Z]{2})?)

A possible way of doing it:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^[\\w._-]+_\\d{2}-\\d{2}-\\d{4}(\\.txt(\\.gz)?)$");
Then you can run the following test:
String[] fileNames = {
"abcd_04-04-2020.txt",
"abcd_04-04-2020.tar",
"abcd_04-04-2020.txt.gz",
"abcd_04-04-2020.png",
".txt",
".txt.gz",
"04-04-2020.txt"
};
Arrays.stream(fileNames)
.filter(fileName -> pattern.matcher(fileName).find())
.forEach(System.out::println);
// output
// abcd_04-04-2020.txt
// abcd_04-04-2020.txt.gz

I think what you want (following from the direction you were going) is this:
[\\w._-]+[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4}\\.[a-zA-Z]{3}(?:$|\\.[a-zA-Z]{2}$)
At the end, I have a conditional statement. It has to either match the end of the string ($) OR it has to match a literal dot followed by 2 letters (\\.[a-zA-Z]{2}). Remember to escape the ., because in regex . means "match any character".

Java regex to match the start of the word?

Objective: for a given term, I want to check if that term exist at the start of the word. For example if the term is 't'. then in the sentance:
"This is the difficult one Thats it"
I want it to return "true" because of :
This, the, Thats
so consider:
public class HelloWorld{
public static void main(String []args){
String term = "t";
String regex = "/\\b"+term+"[^\\b]*?\\b/gi";
String str = "This is the difficult one Thats it";
System.out.println(str.matches(regex));
}
}
I am getting following Exception:
Exception in thread "main" java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException:
Illegal/unsupported escape sequence near index 7
/\bt[^\b]*?\b/gi
^
at java.util.regex.Pattern.error(Pattern.java:1924)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.escape(Pattern.java:2416)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.range(Pattern.java:2577)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.clazz(Pattern.java:2507)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.sequence(Pattern.java:2030)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.expr(Pattern.java:1964)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.compile(Pattern.java:1665)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.<init>(Pattern.java:1337)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.compile(Pattern.java:1022)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.matches(Pattern.java:1128)
at java.lang.String.matches(String.java:2063)
at HelloWorld.main(HelloWorld.java:8)
Also the following does not work:
import java.util.regex.*;
public class HelloWorld{
public static void main(String []args){
String term = "t";
String regex = "\\b"+term+"gi";
//String regex = ".";
System.out.println(regex);
String str = "This is the difficult one Thats it";
System.out.println(str.matches(regex));
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher m = p.matcher(str);
System.out.println(m.find());
}
}
Example:
{ This , one, Two, Those, Thanks }
for words This Two Those Thanks; result should be true.
Thanks

Since you're using the Java regex engine, you need to write the expressions in a way Java understands. That means removing trailing and leading slashes and adding flags as (?<flags>) at the beginning of the expression.
Thus you'd need this instead:
String regex = "(?i)\\b"+term+".*?\\b"
Have a look at regular-expressions.info/java.html for more information. A comparison of supported features can be found here (just as an entry point): regular-expressions.info/refbasic.html

In Java we don't surround regex with / so instead of "/regex/flags" we just write regex. If you want to add flags you can do it with (?flags) syntax and place it in regex at position from which flag should apply, for instance a(?i)a will be able to find aa and aA but not Aa because flag was added after first a.
You can also compile your regex into Pattern like this
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, flags);
where regex is String (again not enclosed with /) and flag is integer build from constants from Pattern like Pattern.DOTALL or when you need more flags you can use Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE|Pattern.MULTILINE.
Next thing which may confuse you is matches method. Most people are mistaken by its name, because they assume that it will try to check if it can find in string element which can be matched by regex, but in reality, it checks if entire string can be matched by regex.
What you seem to want is mechanism to test of some regex can be found at least once in string. In that case you may either
add .* at start and end of your regex to let other characters which are not part of element you want to find be matched by regex engine, but this way matches must iterate over entire string
use Matcher object build from Pattern (representing your regex), and use its find() method, which will iterate until it finds match for regex, or will find end of string. I prefer this approach because it will not need to iterate over entire string, but will stop when match will be found.
So your code could look like
String str = "This is the difficult one Thats it";
String term = "t";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\b"+term, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(str);
System.out.println(matcher.find());
In case your term could contain some regex special characters but you want regex engine to treat them as normal characters you need to make sure that they will be escaped. To do this you can use Pattern.quote method which will add all necessary escapes for you, so instead of
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\b"+term, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
for safety you should use
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\b"+Pattern.quote(term), Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);

String regex = "(?i)\\b"+term;
In Java, the modifiers must be inserted between "(?" and ")" and there is a variant for turning them off again: "(?-" and ")".
For finding all words beginning with "T" or "t", you may want to use Matcher's find method repeatedly. If you just need the offset, Matcher's start method returns the offset.
If you need to match the full word, use
String regex = "(?i)\\b"+term + "\\w*";

String str = "This is the difficult one Thats it";
String term = "t";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^[+"+term+"].*",Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
String[] strings = str.split(" ");
for (String s : strings) {
if (pattern.matcher(s).matches()) {
System.out.println(s+"-->"+true);
} else {
System.out.println(s+"-->"+false);
}
}

Get substring between two characters

How do you build a regex to return for the characters between < and # of a string?
For example <1001#10.2.2.1> would return 1001.
Would something using <.?> work?

Would something using "<.?>" work?
A slightly modified version of it would work: <.*?# (you need an # at the end, and you need a reluctant quantifier *? in place of an optional mark ?). However it could be inefficient because of backtracking. Something like this would be better:
<([^#]*)#
This expression starts by finding <, taking as many non-# characters as it could, and capturing the # before stopping.
Parentheses denote a capturing group. Use regex API to extract it:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<([^#]*)#");
Matcher m = p.matcher("<1001#10.2.2.1>");
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group(1));
}
This prints 1001 (demo).

What about the next:
(?<=<)[^#]*
e.g.:
private static final Pattern REGEX_PATTERN =
Pattern.compile("(?<=<)[^#]*");
public static void main(String[] args) {
String input = "<1001#10.2.2.1>";
Matcher matcher = REGEX_PATTERN.matcher(input);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group());
}
}
Output:
1001

Um.
<([0-9]*?)#
I'm assuming it's numbers only.
if all characters use this..
<(.*?)#
tested here..
Maybe i'm lacking knowledge but my understanding of regex is that you need () to get the capture groups... otherwise if you don't you'll just be selecting characters without actually "capturing" them.
so this..
<.?>
won't do anything .

Java String matches and replaceAll differ in matching parentheses

I have strings with parentheses and also escaped characters. I need to match against these characters and also delete them. In the following code, I use matches() and replaceAll() with the same regex, but the matches() returns false, while the replaceAll() seems to match just fine, because the replaceAll() executes and removes the characters. Can someone explain?
String input = "(aaaa)\\b";
boolean matchResult = input.matches("\\(|\\)|\\\\[a-z]+");
System.out.printf("matchResult=%s\n", matchResult);
String output = input.replaceAll("\\(|\\)|\\\\[a-z]+", "");
System.out.printf("INPUT: %s --> OUTPUT: %s\n", input, output);
Prints out:
matchResult=false
INPUT: (aaaa) --> OUTPUT: aaaa

matches matches the whole input, not part of it.
The regular expression \(|\)|\\[a-z]+ doesn't describe the whole word, but only parts of it, so in your case it fails.

What matches is doing has already been explained by Binyamin Sharet. I want to extend this a bit.
Java does not have a "findall" or a "g" modifier like other languages have it to get all matches at once.
The Java Matcher class knows only two methods to use a pattern against a string (without replacing it)
matches(): matches the whole string against the pattern
find(): returns the next match
If you want to get all things that fits your pattern, you need to use find() in a loop, something like this:
Pattern p = Pattern
.compile("\\(|\\)|\\\\[a-z]+");
Matcher m = p.matcher(text);
while(m.find()){
System.out.println(m.group(0));
}
or if you are only interested if your pattern exists in the string
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group());
} else {
System.out.println("not found");
}