Get substring of a string using regular expression in Java

Question

I am facing problem in extracting the substring from a string using regular expression in Java. For example, I have the following piece of string.

===Albedo–temperature feedback===
When an area's albedo changes due to snowfall, a snow–temperature [[feedback]] results. 

===Snow===
Snow albedo is highly variable, ranging from as high as 0.9 for freshly fallen snow, to about 0.4 for melting snow, and as low as 0.2 for dirty snow.

====Small-scale effects====
Albedo works on a smaller scale, too.

Please note , the entire content is in a String.

Here each element shown in between === are section headers and I want to extract each section content and its title (header).

So, the output I am trying to generate looks like as follows.

1. Albedo–temperature feedback
content: When an area's albedo changes due to snowfall, a snow–temperature [[feedback]] results.

2. Snow
content: Snow albedo is highly variable, ranging from as high as 0.9 for freshly fallen snow, to about 0.4 for melting snow, and as low as 0.2 for dirty snow.

2. Small-scale effects
content: Albedo works on a smaller scale, too.

I am using the following pattern definition to extract the headers.

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[=]{2,5}(.*?)[=]{2,5}");

This gives me, Albedo–temperature feedback , Snow , Small-scale effects .

Now what I want is the content between each section headers. I am unable to extract them. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Try this.

String s = ""
    + "===Albedo–temperature feedback===\n"
    + "When an area's albedo changes due to snowfall, a snow–temperature [[feedback]] results. \n"
    + "\n"
    + "===Snow===\n"
    + "Snow albedo is highly variable, ranging from as high as 0.9 for freshly fallen snow, to about 0.4 for melting snow, and as low as 0.2 for dirty snow.\n"
    + "\n"
    + "====Small-scale effects====\n"
    + "Albedo works on a smaller scale, too.\n";
Pattern PAT = Pattern.compile("^()$|^={2,5}(.+?)={2,5}$|^(.+)$", Pattern.MULTILINE);
String NEWLINE = "\n";
Matcher m = PAT.matcher(s);
int number = 0;
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
while (m.find()) {
    if (m.group(2) != null)
        sb.append(++number).append(". ").append(m.group(2));
    else if (m.group(3) != null)
        sb.append("content: ").append(m.group(3));
    sb.append(NEWLINE);
}
System.out.println(sb.toString());