How to capture this group with quotes in between?

Question

    String content = "$.test(\"I am do'in testing\") ";
    Matcher matcher = 
     Pattern.compile("\\$.test.*?(.*?[\"'](.*?)[\"'].*?)").matcher(content);

Output is ("I am do' but i need to capture I am do'in testing. Not sure ehat i am missing here ?

Similarly input can be "$.test(\'I am do"in testing\')" output should be I am do'in testing

Possible duplicate of [RegEx: Grabbing values between quotation marks](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/171480/regex-grabbing-values-between-quotation-marks) — revo, May 24 '18 at 18:08
@revo Its not duplicate as i need to escape intermediate `'` or `"` — scott miles, May 24 '18 at 18:09
Read other answers in that topic. There are a few to cover this. — revo, May 24 '18 at 18:11
@revo that's not mine requirement. Let me know if there is specific answer you want to point out ? — scott miles, May 24 '18 at 18:13
maybe [`^\$\.test$\\(['"])(.*?)\\\1$`](https://regex101.com/r/2dsbEP/1) — The fourth bird, May 24 '18 at 18:35
@anubhava can you please let me know what's wrong in my regex ? — scott miles, May 24 '18 at 18:47
The problem with your regex is it does not account escaped quotes and it does not ensure the opening quote is the same as the closing quote. The latter explains the behavior you observed. The fourth bird's pattern solves this issue using a backreference: — wp78de, May 24 '18 at 19:59

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 24 '18 at 19:00

\$.test.*?(.*?["'](.*?)["'].*?)

This is your regex. This regex is using lazy quantifier between ["'] and another ["']. This makes it match between " (double quote) and ' single quote when your input is: $.test("I am do'in testing")

Hence it matches and captures I am do in capture group #1.

Another problem is that you're not escaping dot after $ which may result in matching any character instead of literal dot.

You may use this regex to match string between both single or double quotes that skips escaped quotes with a backslash:

\$\.test[^'"]*(?:"([^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*)"|'((?:[^'\\]*(?:\\.[^'\\]*)*))').*

RegEx Demo

Code:

final String regex = "\\$\\.test[^'\"]*(?:\"([^\"\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^\"\\\\]*)*)\"|'((?:[^'\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^'\\\\]*)*))').*";

final Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
final Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher( input );

while (matcher.find()) {
    System.out.printf("Group-1: %s, Group-2: %s%n", matcher.group(1), matcher.group(2));
}

How to capture this group with quotes in between?

1 Answers1