regex - Java Regular expression matching square bracket

Question

Would someone kindly demonstrate what the regular expession would be for matching the square brackets?

I'm currently using java.util.regex.

For example, let's say we have the following line:

public static void main (String[] args) {

I need to match only the OPEN square bracket [ and next, the close square bracket ].

I'm not saying I need to match the text between the square brackets.

I have tried with

[\\]]

and

\\]

Unfortunately, it matches the text as well and I need to match only [ or ].

The weird thing is, when I try to match the { with [\\}], it works!

Thoughts?

I'm seeing confusion here about basic regex concepts. Please edit your question and show us exactly what you are trying to match. — Tim Biegeleisen, Oct 25 '17 at 05:59
Please post the code you've tried. Some characters need to be escaped with backslash in a regex, and then the backslash needs to be escaped with another backslash in string literals. It's hard to tell whether you're getting it right. — ajb, Oct 25 '17 at 06:10
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21282947/regular-expression-to-match-string-within-a-square-bracket — Hoque MD Zahidul, Oct 25 '17 at 06:34

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 25 '17 at 10:08

You can do it using:

    String text = "[This is the text]";

    String patternString = "\\[.*.\\]";

    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternString);

    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);

    System.out.println("Matcher? " + matcher.matches());

This return true if the text has a [ and ] and false if it doesn't

Hope this can help you. Thanks.

regex - Java Regular expression matching square bracket

1 Answers1