Java Regex提取两个令牌之间的任何字符

Question

I am trying to parse the following text

### __Description of the report__
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,  & mauris elit, blandit a turpis vel nibh, 
consectetuer aliquam. Nec sem. Venenatis quam etiam donec consequat 
sagittis, luctus porttitor odit sollicitudin <> vestibulum ultrices erat,
sed eleifend 
* amet, sollicitudin sit egestas 
* quis eros nulla. Sed donec

### __Notable filters__
* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, mauris elit, blandit a turpis vel
* consectetuer aliquam. Nec sem. Venenatis quam etiam donec consequat 
* sagittis, luctus porttitor odit sollicitudin vestibulum ultrices 

I want to capture all text between the ### __Description of the report__ and ### __Notable filters__ which could be numbers letters, or any combination of special characters.

I thought using ### __Description of the report__(.*?)### __Notable filters__ would work, but it doesn't return any results. How can i extract the text between the two headings?

Answer 1

You can use the String's split function and use both headers as the regex, concatenating with the '|' operator.

In this way, the content of the first section will be placed in the first element of the array and the content of the second section will be placed in the second element of the array.

Please check this code:

public class Test {
    private String testString = "### __Description of the report__\n" +
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,  & mauris elit, blandit a turpis vel nibh, \n" +
"consectetuer aliquam. Nec sem. Venenatis quam etiam donec consequat \n" +
"sagittis, luctus porttitor odit sollicitudin <> vestibulum ultrices erat,\n" +
"sed eleifend \n" +
"* amet, sollicitudin sit egestas \n" +
"* quis eros nulla. Sed donec\n" +
"\n" +
"### __Notable filters__\n" +
"* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, mauris elit, blandit a turpis vel\n" +
"* consectetuer aliquam. Nec sem. Venenatis quam etiam donec consequat \n" +
"* sagittis, luctus porttitor odit sollicitudin vestibulum ultrices ";

    public static void main (String[] args)
    {
        Test t = new Test();
        String[] parts = t.testString.split("### __Description of the report__\n|### __Notable filters__\n");
    }
}

Answer 2

Use Pattern.DOTALL :

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("### __Description of the report__(.*?)### __Notable filters__", Pattern.DOTALL);

Pattern.MULTILINE will match ### __Description of the report__ and ### __Notable filters__ with the start and end of EVERY LINE , so that can't be used. DOTALL will match . with each character, including \\n , which won't happen without specifying Pattern.DOTALL .

To store it, do this:

Matcher m = p.matcher(str); // 'str' is the string with the text
while(m.find())
{
    YourString = m.group(1);
}

Later, you can replace the extra spaces like this:

YourString = YourString.replaceAll("\\s+", " ");

Answer 3

Trying out your regex seems to return nothing because of your choice of expression:

... report__(.*?)### __N ...

The . character matches non-newline characters, so either you need to take out newlines in your string before parsing, or change your expression to fit newlines in your input

---

@CoffeehouseCoder's answer suggests using Pattern.DOTALL , which will fix this issue by allowing . to match newlines

---

Alternatively, you can update your regex to match either a character or a newline like so :

... report__((.|\\n)*?)### ...