Getting submatches when the regex match with a larger string

Question

I'm trying to match a pattern in a Java string (a json one). This pattern matches in the string several times, but it also matches with a string that contains the others. Let me explain myself with an example.

    String json = "IRRELEVANT_TEXT{'/element|1717_todossavoy/480/': {item_url:'/element|1717_Lorem/64/', item_description: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet'},'/element|1717_Marcrie/480/': {item_url:'/element|1717_Vestibulum/64/', item_description: ' Vestibulum enim tellus, sodales sit amet consequat ut'},'/element|1717_Cannes05/434/': {item_url:'/element|1717_Nullam/64/', item_description: 'Nullam gravida risus vehicula nisi egestas'},'/element|1717_babelsavoy/266/': {item_url:'/element|1717_Pellentesque/64/', item_description: 'Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus'}};IRRELEVANT";
    Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("/element.*480/").matcher(json);
    while(matcher.find()) {
        System.out.println(matcher.group());
    }

I am getting the following:

/element|1717_todossavoy/480/': {item_url:'/element|1717_Lorem/64/', item_description: 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet'},'/element|1717_Marcrie/480/

But I'd like to get the 2 following keys:

/element|1717_todossavoy/480/
/element|1717_Marcrie/480/

What am I doing wrong?

Thats beacause of greedy regexps. Look at http://stackoverflow.com/a/2301298/891391 — yatul, Jul 10 '13 at 11:56

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 10 '13 at 12:00

4

.* is greedy and will try to match as much as possible. You can make it reluctant/ungreedy by appending a question mark. .*?.

However, this still won't give you what you want because /element|1717_Lorem/64/ will match up to 480. A better regex would probably be

/element[^/]+/480/

answered Jul 10 '13 at 12:00

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Thank for your response. That saved my day and it is really understable :) – hosseio Jul 10 '13 at 12:44

Getting submatches when the regex match with a larger string

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