CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregexregex-lookarounds
Pierangelo Calanna
Pierangelo Calanna

Reputation: 572

Complicated regex with numbers and group of numbers

I have this strings like this one as input:

(1,3,4,(3,4,21),55,69,12,(3,8),9)

and I would like to have this output, as an array or a list of strings

1 - 3 - 4 - (3,4,21) - 55 - 69 - 12 - (3,8) - 9

Could someone help? I've tried a couple regex but had no luck.

EDIT: Please note that the "-" in the output represents a different element of the same array or list, not a desidered character.

Example: array[0]="1"; array[1]="3"; array[3]="(3,4,21)";

Upvotes: 0

Views: 95

Answers (1)

Mustofa Rizwan
Mustofa Rizwan

Reputation: 10466

You may try this regex:

,(?!(?:(?:[^\(\)]*[\(\)]){2})*[^\(\)]*$)

This will match all the commas(,) that should be replaced by - or you may split by the above regex as well

Explanation:

The logic is to find a comma that is not followed by even numbers of brackets ( and )

Regex101 Demo

Sample Source ( run here ):

final String regex = ",(?!(?:(?:[^\\(\\)]*[\\(\\)]){2})*[^\\(\\)]*$)";
final String string = "(1,3,4,(3,4,21),55,69,12,(3,8),9)";

String[] result=string.split(regex);
int len=result.length;
for(int i=0;i<len;i++)
{

// the following two if condition is necessary to remove the start and end brace
// many other and probably better alternatives could be there to remove it 

 if(result[i].contains("(") && !result[i].contains(")"))
  result[i]=result[i].replace("(","");
 else if(result[i].contains(")") && !result[i].contains("("))
  result[i]=result[i].replace(")","");   
}

System.out.println(java.util.Arrays.toString(result));

Output:

[1, 3, 4, (3,4,21), 55, 69, 12, (3,8), 9]

Upvotes: 3

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