Regex to get text between two characters in Java

Question

I've this string:

Test 123 ${tag1} lorem ipsum ${tag2} ${tag3; tag4} ${tag5; tag6} dixit lorem ${tag7} dixit lorem ${tag8}.

I would like to have a regex to select only the text between ${tag; tag} .

I tried with this:

\$\{(.*?)(; )(.*?)}

but can't get what I'm expecting. Any suggest? Thanks

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-19 21:30:28Z

3

If the inner text inside the ${...;...} cannot contain {, } and ; use a negated character class solution:

\$\{([^;{}]*);\s*([^{};]*)}

See the regex demo.

If the plan is to match word chars only you may simplify it to

\$\{(\w+)\s*;\s*(\w+)}

See another regex demo.

Details

\$\{ - a ${ substring
([^;{}]*) - Group 1: any 0+ chars other than ;, { and } ((\w+) would match 1 or more word chars, letters, digits, underscores)
\s*;\s* - a ; enclosed with 0+ whitespaces
([^;{}]*) - Group 2: any 0+ chars other than ;, { and }
} - a } char.

Java demo:

String s = "Test 123 ${tag1} lorem ipsum ${tag2} ${tag3; tag4} ${tag5; tag6} dixit lorem ${tag7} dixit lorem ${tag8}.";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\$\\{(\\w+)\\s*;\\s*(\\w+)}");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(s);
while (matcher.find()){
    System.out.println(matcher.group());
    System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
    System.out.println(matcher.group(2)); 
    System.out.println("=== END OF MATCH ===");
}

Output:

${tag3; tag4}
tag3
tag4
=== END OF MATCH ===
${tag5; tag6}
tag5
tag6
=== END OF MATCH ===

answered Feb 19, 2019 at 21:30

Wiktor Stribiżew

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1 Comment

Dave Over a year ago

Thank you very much! Is working and the explanation is awesome! Thanks again.

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