Trying to make a regex that grabs all words like lets just say, chicken, that are not in brackets. So like
chicken
Would be selected but
[chicken]
Would not. Does anyone know how to do this?
String template = "[chicken]";
String pattern = "\\G(?<!\\[)(\\w+)(?!\\])";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(pattern);
Matcher m = p.matcher(template);
while (m.find())
{
System.out.println(m.group());
}
It uses a combination of negative look-behind and negative look-aheads and boundary matchers.
(?<!\\[) //negative look behind
(?!\\]) //negative look ahead
(\\w+) //capture group for the word
\\G //is a boundary matcher for marking the end of the previous match
(please read the following edits for clarification)
EDIT 1:
If one needs to account for situations like:
"chicken [chicken] chicken [chicken]"
We can replace the regex with:
String regex = "(?<!\\[)\\b(\\w+)\\b(?!\\])";
EDIT 2:
If one also needs to account for situations like:
"[chicken"
"chicken]"
As in one still wants the "chicken", then you could use:
String pattern = "(?<!\\[)?\\b(\\w+)\\b(?!\\])|(?<!\\[)\\b(\\w+)\\b(?!\\])?";
Which essentially accounts for the two cases of having only one bracket on either side. It accomplishes this through the | which acts as an or, and by using ? after the look-ahead/behinds, where ? means 0 or 1 of the previous expression.
I guess you want something like:
final Pattern UNBRACKETED_WORD_PAT = Pattern.compile("(?<!\\[)\\b\\w+\\b(?!])");
private List<String> findAllUnbracketedWords(final String s) {
final List<String> ret = new ArrayList<String>();
final Matcher m = UNBRACKETED_WORD_PAT.matcher(s);
while (m.find()) {
ret.add(m.group());
}
return Collections.unmodifiableList(ret);
}
Use this:
/(?<![\[\w])\w+(?![\w\]])/
i.e., consecutive word characters with no square bracket or word character before or after.
This needs to check both left and right for both a square bracket and a word character, else for your input of [chicken] it would simply return
hicke
Without look around:
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
public class MatchingTest
{
private static String x = "pig [cow] chicken bull] [grain";
public static void main(String[] args)
{
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(\\[?)(\\w+)(\\]?)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(x);
while(m.find())
{
String firstBracket = m.group(1);
String word = m.group(2);
String lastBracket = m.group(3);
if ("".equals(firstBracket) && "".equals(lastBracket))
{
System.out.println(word);
}
}
}
}
Output:
pig
chicken
A bit more verbose, sure, but I find it more readable and easier to understand. Certainly simpler than a huge regular expression trying to handle all possible combinations of brackets.
Note that this won't filter out input like [fence tree grass]; it will indicate that tree is a match. You cannot skip tree in that without a parser. Hopefully, this is not a case you need to handle.
Related
I am using Java to process text using regular expressions. I am using the following regular expression
^[\([0-9a-zA-Z]+\)\s]+
to match one or more letters or numbers in parentheses one or more times. For instance, I like to match
(aaa) (bb) (11) (AA) (iv)
or
(111) (aaaa) (i) (V)
I tested this regular expression on http://java-regex-tester.appspot.com/ and it is working. But when I use it in my code, the code does not compile. Here is my code:
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class Tester {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^[\([0-9a-zA-Z]+\)\s]+");
String[] words = pattern.split("(a) (1) (c) (xii) (A) (12) (ii)");
String w = pattern.
for(String s:words){
System.out.println(s);
}
}
}
I tried to use \ instead of \ but the regex gave different results than what I expected (it matches only one group like (aaa) not multiple groups like (aaa) (111) (ii).
Two questions:
How can I fix this regex and be able to match multiple groups?
How can I get the individual matches separately (like (aaa) alone and then (111) and so on). I tried pattern.split but did not work for me.
Firstly, you want to escape any backslashes in the quotation marks with another backslash. The Regex will treat it as a single backslash. (E.g. call a word character \w in quotation marks, etc.)
Secondly, you got to finish the line that reads:
String w = pattern.
That line explains why it doesn't compile.
Here is my final solution to match the individual groups of letters/numbers in brackets that appear at the beginning of a line and ignore the rest
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class Tester {
static ArrayList<String> listOfEnums;
public static void main(String[] args) {
listOfEnums = new ArrayList<String>();
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^\\([0-9a-zA-Z^]+\\)");
String p = "(a) (1) (c) (xii) (A) (12) (ii) and the good news (1)";
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(p);
boolean isMatch = matcher.find();
int index = 0;
//once you find a match, remove it and store it in the arrayList.
while (isMatch) {
String s = matcher.group();
System.out.println(s);
//Store it in an array
listOfEnums.add(s);
//Remove it from the beginning of the string.
p = p.substring(listOfEnums.get(index).length(), p.length()).trim();
matcher = pattern.matcher(p);
isMatch = matcher.find();
index++;
}
}
}
1) Your regex is incorrect. You want to match individual groups of letters / numbers in brackets, and the current regex will match only a single string of one or more such groups. I.e. it will match
(abc) (def) (123)
as a single group rather than three separate groups.
A better regex that would match only up to the closing bracket would be
\([0-9a-zA-Z^\)]+\)
2) Java requires you to escape all backslashes with another backslash
3) The split() method will not do what you want. It will find all matches in your string then throw them away and return an array of what is left over. You want to use matcher() instead
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\([0-9a-zA-Z^\\)]+\\)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("(a) (1) (c) (xii) (A) (12) (ii)");
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group());
}
First time posting.
Firstly I know how to use both Pattern Matcher & String Split.
My questions is which is best for me to use in my example and why?
Or suggestions for better alternatives.
Task:
I need to extract an unknown NOUN between two known regexp in an unknown string.
My Solution:
get the Start and End of the noun (from Regexp 1&2) and substring to extract the noun.
String line = "unknownXoooXNOUNXccccccXunknown";
int goal = 12 ;
String regexp1 = "Xo+X";
String regexp2 = "Xc+X";
I need to locate the index position AFTER the first regex.
I need to locate the index position BEFORE the second regex.
A) I can use pattern matcher
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regexp1);
Matcher m = p.matcher(line);
if (m.find()) {
int afterRegex1 = m.end();
} else {
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
//TODO Exception Management;
}
B) I can use String Split
String[] split = line.split(regex1,2);
if (split.length != 2) {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
//TODO Exception Management;
}
int afterRegex1 = line.indexOf(split[1]);
Which Approach should I use and why?
I don't know which is more efficient on time and memory.
Both are near enough as readable to myself.
I'd do it like this:
String line = "unknownXoooXNOUNXccccccXunknown";
String regex = "Xo+X(.*?)Xc+X";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher m = p.matcher(line);
if (m.find()) {
String noun = m.group(1);
}
The (.*?) is used to make the inner match on the NOUN reluctant. This protects us from a case where our ending pattern appears again in the unknown portion of the string.
EDIT
This works because the (.*?) defines a capture group. There's only one such group defined in the pattern, so it gets index 1 (the parameter to m.group(1)). These groups are indexed from left to right starting at 1. If the pattern were defined like this
String regex = "(Xo+X)(.*?)(Xc+X)";
Then there would be three capture groups, such that
m.group(1); // yields "XoooX"
m.group(2); // yields "NOUN"
m.group(3); // yields "XccccccX"
There is a group 0, but that matches the whole pattern, and it's equivalent to this
m.group(); // yields "XoooXNOUNXccccccX"
For more information about what you can do with the Matcher, including ways to get the start and end positions of your pattern within the source string, see the Matcher JavaDocs
You should use String.split() for readability unless you're in a tight loop.
Per split()'s javadoc, split() does the equivalent of Pattern.compile(), which you can optimize away if you're in a tight loop.
It looks like you want to get a unique occurrence. For this do simply
input.replaceAll(".*Xo+X(.*)Xc+X.*", "$1")
For efficiency, use Pattern.matcher(input).replaceAll instead.
In case you input contains line breaks, use Pattern.DOTALL or the s modifier.
In case you want to use split, consider using Guava's Splitter. It behaves more sane and also accepts a Pattern which is good for speed.
If you really need the locations you can do it like this:
String line = "unknownXoooXNOUNXccccccXunknown";
String regexp1 = "Xo+X";
String regexp2 = "Xc+X";
Matcher m=Pattern.compile(regexp1).matcher(line);
if(m.find())
{
int start=m.end();
if(m.usePattern(Pattern.compile(regexp2)).find())
{
final int end = m.start();
System.out.println("from "+start+" to "+end+" is "+line.substring(start, end));
}
}
But if you just need the word in between, I recommend the way Ian McLaird has shown.
The basic idea is that I want to pull out any part of the string with the form "text1.text2". Some examples of the input and output of what I'd like to do would be:
"employee.first_name" ==> "employee.first_name"
"2 * employee.salary AS double_salary" ==> "employee.salary"
Thus far I have just .split(" ") and then found what I needed and .split("."). Is there any cleaner way?
I would go with an actual Pattern and an iterative find, instead of splitting the String.
For instance:
String test = "employee.first_name 2 * ... employee.salary AS double_salary blabla e.s blablabla";
// searching for a number of word characters or puctuation, followed by dot,
// followed by a number of word characters or punctuation
// note also we're avoiding the "..." pitfall
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[\\w\\p{Punct}&&[^\\.]]+\\.[\\w\\p{Punct}&&[^\\.]]+");
Matcher m = p.matcher(test);
while (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group());
}
Output:
employee.first_name
employee.salary
e.s
Note: to simplify the Pattern you could only list the allowed punctuation forming your "."-separated words in the categories
For instance:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[\\w_]+\\.[\\w_]+");
This way, foo.bar*2 would be matched as foo.bar
You need to make use of split to break the string into fragments.Then search for . in each of those fragments using contains method, to get the desired fragments:
Here you go:
public static void main(String args[]) {
String str = "2 * employee.salary AS double_salary";
String arr[] = str.split("\\s");
for (int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
if (arr[i].contains(".")) {
System.out.println(arr[i]);
}
}
}
String mydata = "2 * employee.salary AS double_salary";
pattern = Pattern.compile("(\\w+\\.\\w+)");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(mydata);
if (matcher.find())
{
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}
I'm not an expert in JAVA, but as I used regex in python and based on internet tutorials, I offer you to use r'(\S*)\.(\S*)' as the pattern. I tried it in python and it worked well in your example.
But if you want to use multiple dots continuously, it has a bug. I mean if you are trying to match something like first.second.third, this pattern identifies ('first.second', 'third') as the matched group and I think it relates to the best match strategy.
If I have a key that has the following sequence of characters: _(some number)_1. How can I just return (some number).
For example if the key is _6654_1 I just need value 6654. The problem/issue that's really confusing me is the number could be any length like _9332123425234_1 in which case I would just need the 9332123425234.
Here's what I've tried so far:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("_[\\d]_1");
Matcher match = p.matcher(request.getParameter("course_id"));
but this won't cover the case where the middle number can be any number (not just four digits) will it?
You could just figure out the indexOf('_') and then use substring. No need for regular expressions.
...but since you asked for regular expressions, here you go:
import java.util.regex.*;
class Test {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String str = "_6654_1";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("_(\\d+)_1");
Matcher m = p.matcher(str);
if (m.matches())
System.out.println(m.group(1)); // prints 6654
}
}
(And here is the substring-approach for comparison:)
String str = "_6654_1";
String num = str.substring(1, str.indexOf('_', 1));
System.out.println(num); // prints 6654
And, a final solution, using a simple split("_"):
String str = "_6654_1";
System.out.println(str.split("_")[1]); // prints.... you guessed it: 6654
Do you really need regexp? You can use substring and indexOf:
String st = "_9332123425234_1";
String number = st.substring(1,st.indexOf('_',1));
Assuming you have the underscores before and after your digit sequence, you could use _(\d+)_ to create a Capturing Group.
See http://download.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html
You might also want to consider using a Splitter:
Splitter
This might be more efficient than a regex and since it returns all the elements you will be the before and after elements as well as the number in the middle. So, if you eventually need the number after the second "_" this might be the better way to go.
I know, now I have two problems. But I'm having fun!
I started with this advice not to try and split, but instead to match on what is an acceptable field, and expanded from there to this expression.
final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\"([^\"]*)\"|(?<=,|^)([^,]*)(?=,|$)");
The expression looks like this without the annoying escaped quotes:
"([^"]*)"|(?<=,|^)([^,]*)(?=,|$)
This is working well for me - either it matches on "two quotes and whatever is between them", or "something between the start of the line or a comma and the end of the line or a comma". Iterating through the matches gets me all the fields, even if they are empty. For instance,
the quick, "brown, fox jumps", over, "the",,"lazy dog"
breaks down into
the quick
"brown, fox jumps"
over
"the"
"lazy dog"
Great! Now I want to drop the quotes, so I added the lookahead and lookbehind non-capturing groups like I was doing for the commas.
final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(?<=\")([^\"]*)(?=\")|(?<=,|^)([^,]*)(?=,|$)");
again the expression is:
(?<=")([^"]*)(?=")|(?<=,|^)([^,]*)(?=,|$)
Instead of the desired result
the quick
brown, fox jumps
over
the
lazy dog
now I get this breakdown:
the quick
"brown
fox jumps"
,over,
"the"
,,
"lazy dog"
What am I missing?
Operator precedence. Basically there is none. It's all left to right. So the or (|) is applying to the closing quote lookahead and the comma lookahead
Try:
(?:(?<=")([^"]*)(?="))|(?<=,|^)([^,]*)(?=,|$)
(?:^|,)\s*(?:(?:(?=")"([^"].*?)")|(?:(?!")(.*?)))(?=,|$)
This should do what you want.
Explanation:
(?:^|,)\s*
The pattern should start with a , or beginning of string. Also, ignore all whitespace at the beginning.
Lookahead and see if the rest starts with a quote
(?:(?=")"([^"].*?)")
If it does, then match non-greedily till next quote.
(?:(?!")(.*?))
If it does not begin with a quote, then match non-greedily till next comma or end of string.
(?=,|$)
The pattern should end with a comma or end of string.
When I started to understand what I had done wrong, I also started to understand how convoluted the lookarounds were making this. I finally realized that I didn't want all the matched text, I wanted specific groups inside of it. I ended up using something very similar to my original RegEx except that I didn't do a lookahead on the closing comma, which I think should be a little more efficient. Here is my final code.
package regex.parser;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class CSVParser {
/*
* This Pattern will match on either quoted text or text between commas, including
* whitespace, and accounting for beginning and end of line.
*/
private final Pattern csvPattern = Pattern.compile("\"([^\"]*)\"|(?<=,|^)([^,]*)(?:,|$)");
private ArrayList<String> allMatches = null;
private Matcher matcher = null;
private String match = null;
private int size;
public CSVParser() {
allMatches = new ArrayList<String>();
matcher = null;
match = null;
}
public String[] parse(String csvLine) {
matcher = csvPattern.matcher(csvLine);
allMatches.clear();
String match;
while (matcher.find()) {
match = matcher.group(1);
if (match!=null) {
allMatches.add(match);
}
else {
allMatches.add(matcher.group(2));
}
}
size = allMatches.size();
if (size > 0) {
return allMatches.toArray(new String[size]);
}
else {
return new String[0];
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
String lineinput = "the quick,\"brown, fox jumps\",over,\"the\",,\"lazy dog\"";
CSVParser myCSV = new CSVParser();
System.out.println("Testing CSVParser with: \n " + lineinput);
for (String s : myCSV.parse(lineinput)) {
System.out.println(s);
}
}
}
I know this isn't what the OP wants, but for other readers, one of the String.replace methods could be used to strip the quotes from each element in the result array of the OPs current regex.