given 3 lines , how can I extract 2nd line using regular expression ?
line1
line2
line3
I used
pattern = Pattern.compile("line1.*(.*?).*line3");
But nothing appears
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2try the DOTALL option when compiling the regex.Mitch– Mitch2012-01-24 15:27:46 +00:00Commented Jan 24, 2012 at 15:27
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4 Answers
You can use Pattern.DOTALL flag like this:
String str = "line1\nline2\nline3";
Pattern pt = Pattern.compile("line1\n(.+?)\nline3", Pattern.DOTALL);
Matcher m = pt.matcher(str);
while (m.find())
System.out.printf("Matched - [%s]%n", m.group(1)); // outputs [line2]
3 Comments
tnaser
This seems extract \n , any way to remove them ?
tnaser
In your example it worked , in my example it is still giving me the new lines . Any other ways to remove them ? I tried string = string.replaceAll("\\\\n", ""); but didn't work
anubhava
You can call replaceAll as well but if you use my updated RegEx then it won't even capture
\n thus eliminating the need to call replaceAllThis won't work, since your first .* matches everything up to line3. Your reluctant match gets lost, as does the second .*.
Try to specify the line breaks (^ and $) after line1 / before line3.
Comments
Try pattern = Pattern.compile("line1.*?(.*?).*?line3", Pattern.DOTALL | Pattern.MULTILINE);
1 Comment
Urs Reupke
I don't think this works - won't the reluctant group in the middle will resolve to 0 characters?
You can extract everything between two non-empty lines:
(?<=.+\n).+(?=\n.+)
