I am writing a parser for a file containing the following string pattern:
Key : value
Key : value
Key : value
etc...
I am able to retrieve those lines one by one into a list. What I would like to do is to separate the key from the value for each one of those strings. I know there is the split() method that can take a Regex and do this for me, but I am very unfamiliar with them so I don't know what Regex to give as a parameter to the split() function.
Also, while not in the specifications of the file I am parsing, I would like for that Regex to be able to recognize the following patterns as well (if possible):
Key: value
Key :value
Key:value
etc...
So basically, whether there's a space or not after/before/after AND before the : character, I would like for that Regex to be able to detect it. What is the Regex that can achieve this?
In other words split method should look for : and zero or more whitespaces before or after it.
Key: value
^^
Key :value
^^
Key:value
^
Key : value
^^^
In that case split("\\s*:\\s*") should do the trick.
Explanation:
\\s represents any whitespace
* means one or more occurrences of element described before it
\\s* means zero or more whitespaces.
On the other hand you may want also to find entire key:value pair and place parts matching key and value in separate groups (you can even name groups as you like using (?<groupName>regex)). In that case you may use
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(?<key>\\w+)\\s*:\\s*(?<value>\\w+)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(yourData);
while(m.find()){
System.out.println("key = " + m.group("key"));
System.out.println("value = " + m.group("value"));
System.out.println("--------");
}
If you want to use String.split(), you could use this:
String input = "key : value";
String[] s = input.split("\\s*:\\s*");
String key = s[0];
String value = s[1];
This will split the String at the ":", but add all whitespaces in front of the ":" to it, so that you will receive a trimmed string.
Explanation:
\\s* will match any whitespace, by default this is equal to [ \\n\\r\\t]*
The : in between the two \\s* means that your : need to be there
Note that this solution will cause an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException if your input line does not contain the key-value-format as you defined it.
If you are not sure if the line really contain the key-value-String, maybe because you want to have an empty line at the end of your file like there normally is, you could do it like that:
String input = "key : value";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(\\S+)\\s*:\\s*(.+)").matcher(input);
if (m.matches())
{
String key = m.group(1); // note that the count starts by 1 here
String value = m.group(2);
}
Explanation:
\\S+ matches any non-whitespace String - if it contains whitespaces, the next part of the regex will be matches with this expression already. Note that the () around it mark so that you can get it's value by m.group().
\\s* will match any whitespace, by default this is equal to [ \\n\\r\\t]*
The : in between the two \\s* means that your : need to be there
The last group, .+, will match any string, containing whitespaces and so on.
you can use the split method but can pass delimiter as ":"
This splits the string when it sees ':', then you can trim the values to get the key and value.
String s = " keys : value ";
String keyValuePairs[] = s.split(":");
String key = keyValuePairs[0].trim();
String value = keyValuePairs[1].trim();
You can also make use of regex to simplify it.
String keyValuePairs[] = s.trim().split("[ ]*:[ ]*");
s.trim() will remove the spaces before and after the string (if you have it in your case), So sting will become "keys : value" and
[ ]*:[ ]*
to split the string with regular expression saying spaces (one or more) : spaces (one or more) as delimiter.
For a pure regex solution, you can use the following pattern (note the space at the beginning):
?: ?
See http://regexr.com/39evh
String[] tokensVal = str.split(":");
String key = tokensVal[0].trim();
String value = tokensVal[1].trim();
Related
I need a regex to split key-value pairs.Key and value are separated by =
Values can contain comma(,) but if they contain comma(,) they need to be enclosed by ("").Also the value in ("") can contain multiple inner ("") with comma(,) in them.Hence multiple level of nesting with (" , ") is possible.
Key can anything except ( comman(,) equal(=) double quote("") )
Example- abc="hi my name is "ayush,nigam"",def="i live at "bangalore",ghi=bangalore is in karnataka,jkl="i am from UP"
Another example - "ayush="piyush="abc,def",bce="asb,dsa"",aman=nigam"
I expect output as ayush="piyush="abc,def",bce="asb,dsa"" and aman=nigam
I am using the following regex code in java.
Pattern abc=Pattern.compile("([^=,]*)=((?:\"[^\"]*\"|[^,\"])*)");
String text2="AssemblyName=(foo.dll),ClassName=\"SomeClassanotherClass=\"a,b\"\"";
Matcher m=abc.matcher(text2);
while(m.find()) {
String kvPair = m.group();
System.out.println(kvPair);
}
I am getting folliwng kvPair
:
AssemblyName=(foo.dll)
ClassName="SomeClassanotherClass="a
Where as i need to get,
AssemblyName=(foo.dll)
ClassName="SomeClassanotherClass="a,b"
Hence comma(,) in inner double quotes("") are not being parse properly.Please help.
Is there a way to add a character, say '\t', at specific position of the string?
For example:
String str = "key1=123 key2=text with spaces key3=foo";
I need to replace all spaces before keys with tabs in the key value pair string.
Note that some values may contain spaces.
Use a look ahead:
str = str.replaceAll(" (?=\\w+=)", "\t");
or similar, capture the key and put it back:
str = str.replaceAll(" (\\w+=)", "\t$1");
My Java program, in certain point, receives a string containing a couple of key-value properties like this example:
param1=value Param2=values can have spaces PARAM3=values cant have equal characters
The parameters' name/key are composed by a single word (a-z, A-Z, _ and 0-9) and are followed by an = character (not separated by spaces) and it's value. The value is a text that can contain spaces and last until the end of the string or the begin of another parameter. (which is a word followed by equals and it's value, etc.)
I need to extract a Properties object (string-to-string map) from this string. I was trying to use regex to find each key-value set. The code is like this:
public static String createProperties(String str) {
Properties prop = new Properties();
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(some regex).match(str);
while (matcher.find()) {
String match = matcher.group();
String param = ...; // What comes before '='
String value = ...; // What comes after '='
prop.setProperty(param, value);
}
return prop;
}
But the regex wrote is not working correctly.
String regex = "(\\w+=.*)+";
Since .* tells the regex to get "anything" it found, it will match the entire string. I want to tell the regex to search until it finds another \\w=.*. (word followed by equals and something after)
How could I write this regex? Or what would be another solution for the problem using regex?
You can use a Negative Lookahead here.
(\\w+)=((?:(?!\\s*\\w+=).)*)
The key is placed inside capturing group #1 and the value is in capturing group #2. Note that I used \s inside the lookaround in order to prevent the value from having trailing whitespace.
Live Demo
One way among several:
List<String> paramNames = new ArrayList<String>();
List<String> paramValues = new ArrayList<String>();
Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("([^\\s=]+)=([^\\s=]+)");
Matcher regexMatcher = regex.matcher(subjectString);
while (regexMatcher.find()) {
paramNames.add(regexMatcher.group(1));
paramValues.add(regexMatcher.group(2));
}
The regex:
([^\\s=]+)=([^\\s=]+)
The code retrieves keys as Group 1, values as Group 2.
Explanation
([^\\s=]+) captures any chars that are not a whitespace or an equal to Group 1
= matches the literal =
([^\\s=]+) captures any chars that are not a whitespace or an equal to Group 2
Your regex would be,
(\\w+=(?:(?!\\w+=).)*)
DEMO
It captures the param=value pair upto the next param=. It captures three param=value pair into three separate groups.
Explanation:
\\w+= Matches one or more word characters followed by an = symbol.
(?:(?!\\w+=).)* A non-capturing group and a negative lookahead is used to match any characters not of characters in this \w+= format. So it captures upto the next param=
I am trying to split a string according to a certain set of delimiters.
My delimiters are: ,"():;.!? single spaces or multiple spaces.
This is the code i'm currently using,
String[] arrayOfWords= inputString.split("[\\s{2,}\\,\"\\(\\)\\:\\;\\.\\!\\?-]+");
which works fine for most cases but i'm have a problem when the the first word is surrounded by quotation marks. For example
String inputString = "\"Word\" some more text.";
Is giving me this output
arrayOfWords[0] = ""
arrayOfWords[0] = "Word"
arrayOfWords[1] = "some"
arrayOfWords[2] = "more"
arrayOfWords[3] = "text"
I want the output to give me an array with
arrayOfWords[0] = "Word"
arrayOfWords[1] = "some"
arrayOfWords[2] = "more"
arrayOfWords[3] = "text"
This code has been working fine when quotation marks are used in the middle of the sentence, I'm not sure what the trouble is when it's at the beginning.
EDIT: I just realized I have same problem when any of the delimiters are used as the first character of the string
Unfortunately you wont be able to remove this empty first element using only split. You should probably remove first elements from your string that match your delimiters and split after it. Also your regex seems to be incorrect because
by adding {2,} inside [...] you are in making { 2 , and } characters delimiters,
you don't need to escape rest of your delimiters (note that you don't have to escape - only because it is at end of character class [] so he cant be used as range operator).
Try maybe this way
String regexDelimiters = "[\\s,\"():;.!?\\-]+";
String inputString = "\"Word\" some more text.";
String[] arrayOfWords = inputString.replaceAll(
"^" + regexDelimiters,"").split(regexDelimiters);
for (String s : arrayOfWords)
System.out.println("'" + s + "'");
output:
'Word'
'some'
'more'
'text'
A delimiter is interpreted as separating the strings on either side of it, thus the empty string on its left is added to the result as well as the string to its right ("Word"). To prevent this, you should first strip any leading delimiters, as described here:
How to prevent java.lang.String.split() from creating a leading empty string?
So in short form you would have:
String delim = "[\\s,\"():;.!?\\-]+";
String[] arrayOfWords = inputString.replaceFirst("^" + delim, "").split(delim);
Edit: Looking at Pshemo's answer, I realize he is correct regarding your regex. Inside the brackets it's unnecessary to specify the number of space characters, as they will be caught be the + operator.
I am trying to use a simple split to break up the following string: 00-00000
My expression is: ^([0-9][0-9])(-)([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])
And my usage is:
String s = "00-00000";
String pattern = "^([0-9][0-9])(-)([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])";
String[] parts = s.split(pattern);
If I play around with the Pattern and Matcher classes I can see that my pattern does match and the matcher tells me my groupCount is 7 which is correct. But when I try and split them I have no luck.
String.split does not use capturing groups as its result. It finds whatever matches and uses that as the delimiter. So the resulting String[] are substrings in between what the regex matches. As it is the regex matches the whole string, and with the whole string as a delimiter there is nothing else left so it returns an empty array.
If you want to use regex capturing groups you will have to use Matcher.group(), String.split() will not do.
for your example, you could simply do this:
String s = "00-00000";
String pattern = "-";
String[] parts = s.split(pattern);
I can not be sure, but I think what you are trying to do is to get each matched group into an array.
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(pattern).matcher();
if (matcher.matches()) {
String s[] = new String[matcher.groupCount()) {
for (int i=0;i<matches.groupCount();i++) {
s[i] = matcher.group(i);
}
}
}
From the documentation:
String[] split(String regex) -- Returns: the array of strings computed by splitting this string around matches of the given regular expression
Essentially the regular expression is used to define delimiters in the input string. You can use capturing groups and backreferences in your pattern (e.g. for lookarounds), but ultimately what matters is what and where the pattern matches, because that defines what goes into the returned array.
If you want to split your original string into 7 parts using regular expression, then you can do something like this:
String s = "12-3456";
String[] parts = s.split("(?!^)");
System.out.println(parts.length); // prints "7"
for (String part : parts) {
System.out.println("Part [" + part + "]");
} // prints "[1] [2] [-] [3] [4] [5] [6] "
This splits on zero-length matching assertion (?!^), which is anywhere except before the first character in the string. This prevents the empty string to be the first element in the array, and trailing empty string is already discarded because we use the default limit parameter to split.
Using regular expression to get individual character of a string like this is an overkill, though. If you have only a few characters, then the most concise option is to use foreach on the toCharArray():
for (char ch : "12-3456".toCharArray()) {
System.out.print("[" + ch + "] ");
}
This is not the most efficient option if you have a longer string.
Splitting on -
This may also be what you're looking for:
String s = "12-3456";
String[] parts = s.split("-");
System.out.println(parts.length); // prints "2"
for (String part : parts) {
System.out.print("[" + part + "] ");
} // prints "[12] [3456] "