How to write regular expression to skip a specific charaters in word

[Jigar Damani]

Hi,

I would like to writer regular expression to find word by neglecting specific characters in word.

Example:

I want to search word 123456 in a paragraph. But in paragraph, I have workds 123-456, 1234-56 etc. But I would like to search these words also by skipping hyphen (-).

How to do this?

Thanks in Advance

[John Jai]

Hi,
Check this. hope some one really simplifies it.

	public static void main(String[] args) {  
		Pattern numberPattern = Pattern.compile(".*[1([^a-zA-Z0-9]*?)2([^a-zA-Z0-9]*?)3([^a-zA-Z0-9]*?)4([^a-zA-Z0-9]*?)5([^a-zA-Z0-9]*?)6]*");
//		String sourceString = "1234--56";
		String sourceString = "123-456";
//		String sourceString = "123456";
//		String sourceString = "asdfas asdfas asdfasdf 123-4-5-6 asdf";
		Matcher matcher = numberPattern.matcher(sourceString);
		if(matcher.matches())
			System.out.println("Matched");
	}  

Welcome to the Ranch

[Jigar Damani]

Thanks for your reply..

but this pattern will work for only 123456. I have given example of 123456 but I want to make it dynamic.

[Stephan van Hulst]

Then you can dynamically construct the regular expression.

I wonder what you need this for though.

[Jigar Damani]

Ok...I have to construct regular expression dynamically...

To construct expression dynamically, I would need so many string operation.
so is there any thing that can work without creating regular expression dynamically?

any work around?

Thanks

[John Jai]

Agreed. it wont work for other patterns. But i dont know if there is a straight replacement to exclude special chars.

	static String specialChar = "[^a-zA-Z0-9]*";
	static String anyChar = "(.*?)";
	public static void main(String[] args) {  
		String searchString = "abcd"; 
		final StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
		final StringCharacterIterator iterator = new StringCharacterIterator(searchString);
		char character =  iterator.current();
		result.append(anyChar);
		while (character != CharacterIterator.DONE ){
			result.append(character);			
			result.append(specialChar);
			character = iterator.next();
		}	
		result.append(anyChar);
		System.out.println(result.toString());
		Pattern anyPattern = Pattern.compile(result.toString());
		String sourceString = "Once upon a time -a-b-----c-d- in Ranch";
//		String sourceString = "acd";
//		String sourceString = "abdcd";
//		String sourceString = "-ab-c-d-";
		Matcher matcher = anyPattern.matcher(sourceString);
		if(matcher.matches())
			System.out.println("Matched");
	}  

[Daniel Marti]

You can copy the string, delete all special characters you want to ignore in the string, and then apply the pattern.

[John Jai]

Daniel Marti wrote:You can copy the string, delete all special characters you want to ignore in the string, and then apply the pattern.

hi, how to know which string to copy. It can lead to copying all words in the file to a string & then removing the special characters if we need a file search. Correct me

[Stephan van Hulst]

John, take a look at this snippet and let us know if you understand what is going on:

public static List<MatchResult> search(String text, String word, String ignore) {
    StringBuilder regex = new StringBuilder();
    regex.append(word.charAt(0));

    for (int i = 1; i < word.length(); i++) {
      regex.append(ignore);
      regex.append(word.charAt(i));
    }

    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex.toString());
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(text);
    List<MatchResult> results = new ArrayList<MatchResult>();

    while (scanner.findWithinHorizon(pattern, 0) != null) {
      results.add(scanner.match());
    }

    return results;
  }

[John Jai]

Stephan,
i am new to this Scanner technology. thanks for sharing. I dont understand this one. I have to learn it.

[Stephan van Hulst]

Read the documentation on java.util.Scanner. It's a wonderful tool.

[varun narisetty]

HI friends,
I am also having similar problem, I need to get the substring from a string which matches a particular pattern.

consider an example of string like this String htmlContent = "<p> This is first paragraph.</p> <p> This is another new paragraph</p>" ;
Now i will search for String word =" first paragraph. This is another new";
now i need to get result as "first paragraph.</p> <p> This is another new"

I have tried scanner like this

Scanner scanner = new Scanner(htmlContent);
System.out.println("Content is :"+scanner.findWithinHorizon(word, 0));
I am getting null.

I will be thankful if someone help me how to proceed for this problem.

thank in advance.