from this -> contractor:"Hi, this is \"Paul\", how are you?" client:"Hi ...." <-
I want to get just -> Hi, this is \"Paul\", how are you? <-
I need a regular expression in java to do that I try it but I m struggle with the inner quotation (\") is driving me mad.
Thanks for any hint.
Java supports lookbehinds, so vanilla regex:
"(.*?(?<!\\))"
Inside a Java string (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/37329801/1225328):
\"(.*?(?<!\\\\))\"
The actual text will be contained inside the first group of each match.
Demo: https://regex101.com/r/8OXujX/2
For example, in Java:
String regex = "\"(.*?(?<!\\\\))\"";
String input = "contractor:\"Hi, this is \\\"Paul\\\", how are you?\" client:\"Hi ....\"";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
if (matcher.find()) { // or while (matcher.find()) to iterate through all the matches
System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
} else {
System.out.println("No matches");
}
Prints:
Hi, this is \"Paul\", how are you?
The regexp should be like this: "(?:\\.|[^"\\])*"
It uses non-capturing group ?:, matching any character . or a single character NOT in the list of double quote and backslash.
var text1 = "contractor:\"Hi, this is \\\"Paul\\\", how are you?\" client:\"Hi ....\" <-";
var regExWithQuotation = "contractor:(.+\".+\".+) client:";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regExWithQuotation);
var m = p.matcher(text1);
;
if (m.find()) {
var res = m.group(1);
System.out.println(res);
}
var regExWithoutQuotation = "contractor:\"(.+\".+\".+)?\" client:";
p = Pattern.compile(regExWithoutQuotation);
m = p.matcher(text1);
if (m.find()) {
var res = m.group(1);
System.out.println(res);
}
Output is:
"Hi, this is "Paul", how are you?"
Hi, this is "Paul", how are you?
You can use the regex, (?<=contractor:\").*(?=\" client:)
Description of the regex:
(?<=contractor:\") specifies positive lookbehind for contractor:\".* specifies any character(?=\" client:) specifies positive lookahead for \" client:In short, anything preceded by contractor:\" and followed by \" client:
Demo:
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String str = "contractor:\"Hi, this is \\\"Paul\\\", how are you?\" client:\"Hi ....\"";
String regex = "(?<=contractor:\").*(?=\" client:)";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(str);
while (matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group());
}
}
}
Output:
Hi, this is \"Paul\", how are you?
.indexOf()and.substring()"the text to be matched", and this text may contain other double quotes preceded with a backslash\"?