extract multiple instances of a pattern occuring in string?

Question

I have a String like following:

String text = "This is awesome
               Wait what?
               [[Foo:f1 ]]
               [[Foo:f2]]
               [[Foo:f3]]
               Some texty text
               [[Foo:f4]]

Now, I am trying to write a function:

public String[] getFields(String text, String field){
// do somethng
 }

enter code hereshould return [f1,f2,f3,f4] if i pass this text with field = "Foo"

How do i do this cleanly?

arshajii · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-10 00:39:05Z

3

Use the pattern:

Pattern.compile("\\[\\[" + field + ":\\s*([\\w\\s]+?)\\s*\\]\\]");

and get the values of the first capturing group.

String text = "This is awesome Wait what? [[Foo:f1]] [[Foo:f2]]"
        + " [[Foo:f3]] Some texty text [[Foo:f4]]";

String field = "Foo";

Matcher m = Pattern.compile(
        "\\[\\[" + field + ":\\s*([\\w\\s]+?)\\s*\\]\\]").matcher(text);

while (m.find())
    System.out.println(m.group(1));

f1
f2
f3
f4

You can put all the matches in a List<String> and convert that to an array.

edited Aug 10, 2013 at 0:39

answered Aug 9, 2013 at 23:06

arshajii

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2 Comments

arshajii Over a year ago

@Fraz You should have included a case like that in your example. What do you want to extract there? "f3 f1"?

frazman Over a year ago

umm yeah.. my hack is text.replaceAll("//s" ,"_"); do what you did.. and then reverting back.. is there a cleaner way?

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