I'm using Java's regex library. I want to validate a string against the following format:
31,5,46,7,86(...)
The amount of numbers is not known. I want to make sure there is at least one number in that string, and that every two numbers are separated by a comma. I also want to get the numbers from the string.
(Note: this is just a simplified example, string.split will not solve my actual problem)
I wrote the following regex:
({[0-9]++)((?:,[0-9]++)*+)
The validation part works. However, when I try to extract the numbers, I get 2 groups:
Group1: 31
Group2: ,5,46,7,86
regex101 version: https://regex101.com/r/xJ5oQ6/3
Is there a way I can get each number separately? i.e. to end up with the collection:
[31, 5, 46, 7, 86]
Thanks in advance.
Java does not allow you to access the individual matches of a repeated capturing group. For more information look at this question: Regular Expression - Capturing all repeating groups
The code provided by Tim Pietzcker can help you as well. If you rework it a bit and add a special case for the first number you can use something like this:
String target = "31,5,46,7,86";
Pattern compileFirst = Pattern.compile("(?<number>[0-9]+)(,([0-9])+)*");
Pattern compileFollowing = Pattern.compile(",(?<number>[0-9]+)");
Matcher matcherFirst = compileFirst.matcher(target);
Matcher matcherFollowing = compileFollowing.matcher(target);
System.out.println("matches: " + matcherFirst.matches());
System.out.println("first: " + matcherFirst.group("number"));
int start = 0;
while (matcherFollowing.find(start)) {
String group = matcherFollowing.group("number");
System.out.println("following: " + start + " - " + group);
start = matcherFollowing.end();
}
This outputs:
matches: true
first: 31
following: 0 - 5
following: 4 - 46
following: 7 - 7
following: 9 - 86
This might work for you:
/(?=[0-9,]+$)((?<=,|^)[0-9]{1,2})(?=,|$)/g
The above captures one or two digits followed by ,
or end of input.
Note that I used the g
lobal modifier.
Try it online