Regex- How to negate a word match embedded within a Pattern

[Abhi murali]

Hi,
I have the following text :

String text = "some1 text1 Abstract some2 text2 Abstract REQUIRED TEXT constant text"

Here "constant text" is guaranteed to be present,i.e. After the "REQUIRED TEXT" , "constant text" is always present.
Also the string "Abstract" is present in the location as provided.

What is the regex for extracting the text "REQUIRED TEXT" ?
In words, give everything that is present between "Abstract" and "constant text" ,but has no "Abstract" in between.

I tried this

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("Abstract (?!(?:Abstract)).*constant text");

for which I get the result "Abstract some2 text2 Abstract REQUIRED TEXT constant text"

Its fine even if I get the result "Abstract REQUIRED TEXT constant text" , I can clip "Abstract " and "constant text" from the beginning and end.

Any answers?

[Abhi murali]

Still no reply?

Have i not expressed the problem statement well? Please let me know!

[Maneesh Godbole]

Abhi murali wrote:Still no reply?

PatienceIsAVirtue EaseUp

[Alexander Sales]

i think a better approach to extract, is to use the 'split()' at the string

 ("some1 text1 Abstract some2 text2 Abstract REQUIRED TEXT constant text" ) 

and then loop into it. That way you could branch statements and get the data you need.

[Rob Spoor]

How about this:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("Abstract (?!.*Abstract).*constant text");

Your original regex said to only disallow an "Abstract" directly after "Abstract". This one takes into account anything that goes between the two Abstracts. If you add some parentheses around the second .* you can also use matcher.group(1) to retrieve the value for REQUIRED TEXT:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("Abstract (?!.*Abstract)(.*)constant text");

[Raymond Tong]

Alexander Sales wrote:i think a better approach to extract, is to use the 'split()' at the string

 ("some1 text1 Abstract some2 text2 Abstract REQUIRED TEXT constant text" ) 

and then loop into it. That way you could branch statements and get the data you need.

a similar approach could use String.lastIndexOf()