Negate a regular expression in Java

Question

I need some help find a regular expression matching of a text sting for every char expect the first 10. For example, I used the regex:

.{10} to match the first 10 chars of the text

P53236TT0834691

P53236TT08 34691 --> matching

But I need the negative result as matching (from char 11 to x ) Can someone help me with the right expression?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 11 '13 at 09:14

3

Use a lookbehind:

(?<=^.{10}).*

This will ensure that there are 10 characters before the start of the match and then will match anything until the end of the string.

answered Apr 11 '13 at 09:14

Joey

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As a side-note, I think the caret is unnecessary, but as it doesn't matter that much anyway... – Loamhoof Apr 11 '13 at 09:30
I included it because it makes intent clearer, but yes, it's not strictly necessary. – Joey Apr 11 '13 at 09:37
No idea. I upvoted to counter it since I profiled it and it's consistently faster. – Wug Apr 11 '13 at 14:25

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 11 '13 at 09:15

2

In this specific case, you can use:

String pattern = ".{10}(.*)";

The first capturing group will capture all characters in your search string past the 10th. You can trivially extend this to skip any number of characters.

answered Apr 11 '13 at 09:15

Wug

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score 2 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

2

You could use Groups to match and extract what you need, so the regex would be something like so: ^.{10}(.*)$. This will throw any text coming after the 10th character in a group which you can then access later, as illustrated in this previous SO question.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

Community

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answered Apr 11 '13 at 09:16

npinti

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Negate a regular expression in Java

3 Answers3