CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregex
Vitali Pom
Vitali Pom

Reputation: 602

Can't iterate through Matcher

I'm trying to do this:

String regex= "^[\\d\\D]*([{]([^{}]+)[}])[\\d\\D]*$";
Matcher groupMatcher = Pattern.compile(regex).matcher(command);
int counter = 0;
while(groupMatcher.find()){
  counter++;
}
//print counter

And I always get counter 1 and only resulting match for "{name} {do something}". No matter how I change it, here for instance I get {do something} being matched.

I want to iterate through all of the matches. How can I do it?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 116

Answers (1)

fge
fge

Reputation: 121760

First you should fix your [\d\D]: \D is \d's complement, which means it will match any character which \d doesn't. Basically, this character class is equivalent to ....

Given that, let's replace the character class with its equivalent:

^.*(\{([^{}]+)\}).*$

After the first .*, the regex will have already matched all your input string. However, the matching is not complete: a { needs to be matched.

Therefore, the .* gives back character by character to the regex engine unless it reaches a { -- and that will be the { before {do something}.

Your first capturing group will therefore contain {do something}.

The first thing is therefore to fix your character class: I don't know what you meant when you wrote [\d\D] but it was certainly not "match any character"!

Here is a regex which will try and match all arguments within curly braces:

\{([^{}]+)\}

Use this regex in a Matcher and you'll have your matches (with m.group(1)).

Upvotes: 3

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