regex for first character before space

Question

i am trying to extract "d320" from the below string using regex in java using the below code n-us; micromax d320 build/kot49h)

    String m = "n-us; micromax d320 build/kot49h) ";
    String pattern = "micromax (.*)(\\d\\D)(.*) ";
    Pattern r = Pattern.compile(pattern);
    Matcher m1 = r.matcher(m);
    if (m1.find()) {
        System.out.println(m1.group(1));


    }

but it is giving me the output as "d320 build/kot4" , i want only d320

@TheLostMind tired of posting the same answer again and again for past 2 years.. — Avinash Raj, Feb 15 '16 at 06:02
@TheLostMind I'm going to remove regex from my favourite tags. — Avinash Raj, Feb 15 '16 at 06:05
@AvinashRaj - (80 million developers screaming ..).. Nooooooo. Why God WHy? :P — TheLostMind, Feb 15 '16 at 06:07
@Himanshu - your question is not clear. You are trying to parse the word containing `d` or `D`. Right? — mmuzahid, Feb 15 '16 at 06:09
@TheLostMind Many new comers willing to contribute to this tag like [Stribizhev](http://stackoverflow.com/users/3832970/wiktor-stribi%C5%BCew), vks, etc. So lets keep them a way to go.. Don't worry, main God anubhava is still here to watch all the regex questions.. — Avinash Raj, Feb 15 '16 at 06:12
Now, `string.replaceFirst("\\bregex+or+string\\b", "django+or+google-app-engine", myfavtags);` — Avinash Raj, Feb 15 '16 at 06:17
Do you want to match the third word, or the word following "micromax"? — Bohemian, Feb 15 '16 at 06:18

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 15 '16 at 06:02

Try to use micromax\\s(.*?)\\s like this:

     String m = "n-us; micromax d320 build/kot49h) ";
    String pattern = "micromax\\s(.*?)\\s";
    Pattern r = Pattern.compile(pattern);
    Matcher m1 = r.matcher(m);
    if (m1.find()) {
        System.out.println(m1.group(1));

    }

Output:

  d320

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 15 '16 at 07:18

It's not known whether you want the word after "micromax", or the word that starts with a letter and has all digits afterward, so here's both solutions:

To extract the word following "micromax":

String code = m.replaceAll(".*micromax\\s+(\\w+)?.*", "$1");

To extract the word that looks like "x9999":

String code = m.replaceAll(".*?\b([a-z]\\d+)?\b.*", "$1");

Both snippets will result in a blank string if is there's no match.

regex for first character before space

2 Answers2