Can someone help me out with a regex to match a string which starts with the following eg: The string can begin with any html tag eg: < span > or < p > etc so basically I want a regex to check if a string begins with any opening html tag <> and then followed by [apple videoID=
Eg:
<span>[apple videoID=
Here's what I've tried :
static String pattern = "^<[^>]+>[apple videoID=";
static Pattern pattern1 = Pattern.compile(pattern);
What is wrong in the above?
You have a typo in the following line.
static String pattern = "^<[^>]+>[apple videoID=";
This string is not a valid regular expression because you have an unclosed [ right before the word apple, hence the "Unclosed character class" PatternSyntaxException. You either meant to type
static String pattern = "^<[^>]+><apple videoID=";
assuming that apple is an html tag, or
static String pattern = "^<[^>]+>\\[apple videoID=";
if you really did want the [ in front of apple. This is because [ is a special character in regular expressions and must be escaped with a \ which is a special character in Java strings and must be escaped with a \. Therefore \\[.
simple as this:
<[.]+><apple videoID=[.]*
Try this pattern :
"^<[A-Za-z]+>\\[apple videoID=$"
This pattern will match [apple videoID=
Hope this will help you..!
^ and $ means this must be a complete line.Here is the solution
Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE helps to fetch the pattern either in upper case or lower case.
Tested and Executed.
package sireesh.yarlagadda;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class Pattern {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String text="<span><apple videoID=";
String patternString = "<[a-zA-Z]*>\\<apple videoID=";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternString, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
System.out.println("lookingAt = " + matcher.lookingAt());
System.out.println("matches = " + matcher.matches());
}
}
>*) is match 0+ >s. As you can see, that will cause unintended consequences.[a-zA-Z] if you are using CASE_INSENSITIVE ?
^<[^>]+><apple videoID=[A-za-z]This range seems to be wrong. It should be[A-Za-z]