Whats the regular expression for a colon separated value?

Question

If I have a string such as:

blah blah item: value blah blah

What would the expression be to just get value?

What do you need it for? Are you trying to parse JSON yourself? — John Dvorak, Dec 05 '12 at 16:33
are other `item:value` pairs included in the `blah blah` parts of your string? — Fritz, Dec 05 '12 at 16:36
Yes there are other pairs included. I have tried: item:\s*(\d+). But this gives me the item as well. I want the just the value. — carboncomputed, Dec 05 '12 at 16:40

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 05 '12 at 16:33

8

You can use this regex

:\s*(\w+)

$1 or group 1 has the required value

\s* matches 0 to many spaces

\w+ matches 1 to many characters which can be any 1 of [a-zA-Z\d_]

answered Dec 05 '12 at 16:33

Anirudha

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 05 '12 at 16:34

4

The regular expression would be

As in,

String value = yourString.split(":")[1].split(" ")[0]

answered Dec 05 '12 at 16:34

Johan Sjöberg

PermGenError · Answer 3 · 2012-12-05T16:42:03.293

3

for your exact String, using **String.split()**

String s="blah blah item: value blah blah";
System.out.println(s.split("(:\\s+)")[1].split("\\s")[0]);

Output: value

edited Dec 05 '12 at 16:42

answered Dec 05 '12 at 16:37

PermGenError

3 Answers3