CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregex
user2200660
user2200660

Reputation: 1271

Regex to find internal match between two characters

Environment: Java

I want to match characters between two string, here is an example

foo <bar <[email protected]> xoo <[email protected]>

I need two String: [email protected] and [email protected]

I am using this regex:

<(.*?)>

But this is returning me

bar <[email protected]

and 

[email protected]

So basically I want to match characters between two Strings, but I need the internal ones.

Any help is highly appreciated?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 642

Answers (3)

Vivin Paliath
Vivin Paliath

Reputation: 95518

Use the following regex:

<([^<>]+)>

The capturing group should return the string you want.

The problem with your regex is that you are failing to take into account the possibility that you could encounter another < character after the starting <. Your regex, as it stands, matches < and then zero or more of any character (non-greedy) followed by >. But the .* part will also match another <. So you want to basically match a string that starts with <, then only contains characters other than < or >, and finally ends with >.

Here's some sample code:

String s = "foo <bar <[email protected]> xoo <[email protected]>";

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("<([^<>]+)>");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(s);

while(matcher.find()) {
    System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}

You can see this in action in Java here.

Upvotes: 3

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785126

You can use this negation based regex for matching:

<[^<>]*>

Online Demo: http://regex101.com/r/mT2pQ3

OR using lookarounds to give you emails only:

(?<=<)[^<>]*(?=>)

Upvotes: 3

Nicolai Kr&#252;ger
Nicolai Kr&#252;ger

Reputation: 431

<([^<>]*?)> will do the trick.

Since "." mathces ANYTHIN (also "<" and ">") "bar ". By using "[^<>]" you say anything (like ".") BUT the charecters within the squares - after the hat.

A great site to test your RegEx is http://www.regexr.com/ :)

Upvotes: 1

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