Regex - extract info from a String in Java

Question

Hi all,
I have a problem in applying a regex in my Java code.
My text string is like this (String myString)

        name: Abc Def;
        blah: 1 2 3;
        second name: Ghi;

I need to extract the name information (Abc Def). Name can contain a string of 1+ words. All the properties (name, blah, second name) are spaced with some whitespaces at the beginning

The code I'm trying to use is

String patternStr = "\\s{2,}name:\\s([\\w ]*\\w+);";
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(patternStr).matcher(myString);
if (matcher.matches()) 
    System.out.println(matcher.group(1));

My regex seems working fine with online tools (regex: \s{2,}name:\s([\w ]*\w+);) but when I port it to java code it simply doesn't work. Any idea of what I'm missing?

Thanks a lot

---

Edit: If I use matcher.find() it works fine.

Answer 1

Here ya go:

^\s*name:\s*([^;]+);

• Start at the beginning of the line.
• Eat as much whitespace as there is.
• Find "name:"
• Eat as much whitespace as there is.
• Capture anything before the next semicolon
• Make sure there's a semicolon

Answer 2

The problem is probably that .match( ) tries to match the whole input line. So either you can add a .+ at the end of the pattern to eat the rest of the line or use .contains( ). (with .match( ) the ^ and $ at the start and end of the pattern are implicit)

Note that you need to provide a flag when you need to match against multi-line input: .compile(patternStr, Perl5Compiler.MULTILINE_MASK)