Hi , can someone help me what would be the regular expression in java for the string "Feb. 26, 2009 8:08 AM PST"????
+4
A:
Use SimpleDateFormat instead of using regexp. Read the tutorial for more info.
UPD: regexp will look like: "(Jan|Feb|Mar).*PST" where list of months should contain all 12 (instead of 3 as in my example). But it's very very unreliable.
Roman
2010-04-27 18:06:07
Joda Time is better still.
Freiheit
2010-04-27 18:24:27
@Freiheit: everytime I see a question about dates in java I'm waiting for the answer/comment like "and don't forget that java dates are broken, use Joda Time instead". And as I understand I'm not alone in this habit.
Roman
2010-04-27 18:43:33
A:
SimpleDateFormat with parse would probably be simpler in Java. See example below. The Javadoc shows what each of the letters in the pattern means.
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM. dd, YYYY h:mm a Z");
Date date = null;
try {
date = formatter.parse(datestring);
} catch(ParseException pe) {
throw new IllegalArguementException(datestring + " is not properly formatted!", pe);
}
justkt
2010-04-27 18:08:29
A:
ya but the problem is that the date which i am trying to extract is nested inside some text. So i was looking for a regex and using it with split method of string in java to extract the dates from the particular string.
sahmed
2010-04-27 18:23:13
Is it an arbitrary date? An arbitrary timezone? The more you can guarantee about the date, the simpler the regex will be.
justkt
2010-04-27 18:26:29
A:
Its actually a simple date with just the above format. I just need to match dates out from a huge text document, and extract them out.
str.split("regex for the above date");
sahmed
2010-04-27 18:29:55
@sahmed - it will be a little bit (in reputation) before you can post comments everywhere, but you should be able to update your own question and also comment on it - check it out and see!
justkt
2010-04-27 18:35:47
A:
i think my approach is wrong. If i use str.split("regex for date"); to extract all the dates from the text. Its not gonna do that but it will retain the other text and split the document when the date occurs.
How do i do what i intend to do , that is from a text extract all the dates perferably in an array which corresopnds to the above format of date??
sahmed
2010-04-27 18:36:11
Look at `Pattern` and `Matcher` in the Java API. Those will do what you want. Also, consider using comments and editing your original post. This would be an ideal edit.
justkt
2010-04-27 18:39:23