Java regex how to get value in brackets

Question

 lineIdentifier:dasda creationDate:[08/06/2018 00:00:00 TO *] text: [dasda, lll]

With regex I would like to get back only data in creationDate

08/06/2018 00:00:00 and *

This is my pattern but does not work

Pattern r = Pattern.compile("\\[(\\w*)\\]");
        Matcher m = r.matcher(result);

        if (m.find( )) {
            System.out.println("Found value: " + m.group(0) );
        }else {
            System.out.println("NO MATCH");
        }

any idea what i am doing worng?

Is your String always formatted like this? Then you can get the indexes of [ and ] and use with substring() — Diego Victor de Jesus, Jun 11 '18 at 07:51
What characters `\w` represents? Are all characters in `[....]` which you want to find matched by it (remember that spaces is also a character)? — Pshemo, Jun 11 '18 at 08:30

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 11 '18 at 07:44

2

You can try:

Pattern r = Pattern.compile(".*(creationDate:\\[(.+?) TO (.+?)\\]?).*");
Matcher m = r.matcher("lineIdentifier:dasda creationDate:[08/06/2018 00:00:00 TO *] text: [dasda, lll]");

if (m.find( )) {
      System.out.println("Found value: " + m.group(2) );
      System.out.println("Found value: " + m.group(3) );
}else {
      System.out.println("NO MATCH");
}

answered Jun 11 '18 at 07:44

Duong Anh

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@Lino Why? OP doesn't want to check if regex *matches* entire text, but to *find* specific part of it. Improvement of this answer wouldn't be using `matches()` but removing unnecessary `.*` at start and end of regex. – Pshemo Jun 11 '18 at 08:28
@Pshemo you're right, either use `matches` with `.*` or use `find` without `.*` – Lino Jun 11 '18 at 08:33

Java regex how to get value in brackets

1 Answers1