java.util.Matcher help please!

[Mark Baldwin]

Hi all,

java.util.regex.Matcher doesn't seem to be working the way I want it to work:

	@Test 
	public void pickOutArgs() {
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile(".*@([a-zA-Z_0-9]*.*)@.*");
        Matcher matcher = p.matcher("@suppYearOfBirth1@ is year of birth while @suppMonthOfBirth1@ is month and @suppDayOfBirth1@ is the day of birth. :)");
        
        while(matcher.find()) {
        	System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
        }
	}

Expected output:

suppYearOfBirth1
suppMonthOfBirth1
suppDayOfBirth1

Output:

suppDayOfBirth1

What's up with this?

[Matthew Brown]

Because you've got the .* at the beginning and end, the pattern will match against the entire string. Maybe a simpler expression like "@([a-zA-Z_0-9]*)@" would do what you want?

[Mark Baldwin]

It did. Thanks friend. Regexp isn't my forte