Regular expressions and matching URLs with metacharacters

Question

I'm having trouble finding a regular expression that matches the following String.

Korben;http://feeds.feedburner.com/KorbensBlog-UpgradeYourMind?format=xml;1

One problem is escaping the question mark. Java's pattern matcher doesn't seem to accept \? as a valid escape sequence but it also fails to work with the tester at myregexp.com.

Here's what I have so far:

([a-zA-Z0-9])+;http://([a-zA-Z0-9./-]+);[0-9]+

Any suggestions?

Edit: The original intent was to match all URLs that could be found after the first semi colon.

Answer 1

If you are putting the expression in a string, you need to escape the "\" as well. That is:

String expr = "([a-zA-Z0-9])+;http://([a-zA-Z0-9./\\-\\?]+);[0-9]+";

You also need to escape the "-" if it's not the last character in a character class ([...]) construct.

Answer 2

[?] matches "?"

Answer 3

Maybe you need to escape your backslash, if your expression is in a string. Something like "\\?"

Answer 4

([a-zA-Z0-9]+);http://([a-zA-Z0-9./-]+)(\?[^;]+);([0-9]+)

Works for me on that RexExp Editor website.