正则表达式以匹配此查询

Question

I have a sentence like this:

Well, {hero}Superman X. 123 Sr.{/hero}, the most lovable guy was hated by {lover}Louis{/lover}.

I am using java regular exp. like this (which is not working: of course):

Pattern search = Pattern.compile("}.*{\\/")

Actually it provides me this output:

}Superman X. 123 Sr.{/hero}, the most lovable guy was hated by {lover}Louis{/

When actually I want: "Superman X. 123 Sr." and then "Louis". How can this be achieved apart from running a while loop and increment the index? I can try that ..but was trying to know if there is an easier way that I am missing.

Answer 1

There may be a better regex, but this (\\{\\w+\\})([\\w\\.\\s]+)(\\{/\\w+\\}) does your work:

String test = "Well, {hero}Superman X. 123 Sr.{/hero}, the most lovable guy"+
                  " was hated by {lover}Louis{/lover}.";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(\\{\\w+\\})([\\w\\.\\s]+)(\\{/\\w+\\})");
Matcher m = p.matcher(test);
while(m.find()){
    System.out.println(m.group(2));
}

Answer 2

That is because quantifiers are greedy by default. You want a lazy quantifier, so try .*? instead of just .* .

Also, you might want to capture the tag itself:

Pattern.compile("\\{([^}]+)\\}(.*?)\\{/\1\\}");

Note that I'm not 100% certain of the current syntax for a backreference in Java regexes, but that should work. You should end up with the tag name in the first captured subpattern ( hero or lover in this case), and the name itself in the second subpattern.