JAVA REGEX extract round colon "123:32:21"

Question

Here's the string format I'm working with: 123:23:21

The three separate numbers could range from 1 to 99999, it's essentially a key to represent a set of data.

I need to extract each of the separate numbers

The first before the colon "123"
The second between the first colon "32" and last colon
The third after the last colon "21"

I've found a few answers (below), but don't provide enough info for a complete amateur to do what I need too.

These are completely wrong but I've tried variations of ^\w+:$, ^:\w+:$, ^:\w+$.

Can anyone give me a heads up as to how to implement this in Java? Could be regex or substring.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:40

2

In java, u can use split method of String or can use Scanner.useDelimiter(pattern)

Ex-

String str = "123:23:21";
String[] nums = str.split(":");

num[0] - 123, num[1] = 23, num[2] = 21 //output

answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:40

Arjit

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:40

Get rid of the ^ and $, as these, respectively, indicate the start and end of the string.

Try just \w+ (the : can be omitted since \w doesn't include :, and wouldn't work too well at the start and end of the string, unless you make it optional).

Then you'll use Matcher.find() to find each occurrence.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:40

This will help you to match the number from 1 - 99999 separated by colon.

String input = "text 123:23:99999 number";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(?:\\D|^)([1-9][0-9]{0,4}):([1-9][0-9]{0,4}):([1-9][0-9]{0,4})(?:\\D|$)");
Matcher m = pattern.matcher(input);
if (m.find()) {
    System.out.println(m.group(1));
    System.out.println(m.group(2));
    System.out.println(m.group(3));
}

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:41

0

You can split() -

String string = "123:23:21";
String[] parts = string.split(":");
for(String p:parts){
    System.out.println(p);
}
/* OUTPUT */
123
23
21

answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:41

Kamehameha

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:44

0

For the string 123:32:21 You can use [^:]+: to get 123: and :[^:]+: to get :32: and :[^:]+ to get :21 and the remove the : from the string

A nice explanation for regex is give in http://www.beedub.com/book/2nd/regexp.doc.html

answered Mar 08 '14 at 12:44

anirudh

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wumpz · Answer 6 · 2014-03-09T08:04:29.040

First of all \w matches word chatacters. For only numbers you need \d. You can extract all three numbers with one regexp using matching groups.

(\d+)\:(\d+)\:(\d+)

Dont forget to write double backslashes if you init your Pattern. From a Matcher which is created by your Pattern you then get the group data. Groups are the ( ) areas from your regexp.

You could improve this by ^ and $ like you already did to force line boundaries.

JAVA REGEX extract round colon "123:32:21"

6 Answers6