How to extract a string between two delimiters [du

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Closed 7 years ago.

Possible Duplicate:
substring between two delimiters

I have a string like

"ABC[ This is to extract ]"

I want to extract the part "This is to extract" in java. I am trying to use split, but it is not working the way I want. Does anyone have suggestion?

Answer 1

If you have just a pair of brackets ( [] ) in your string, you can use indexOf():

String str = "ABC[ This is the text to be extracted ]";    
String result = str.substring(str.indexOf("[") + 1, str.indexOf("]"));

Answer 2

  String s = "ABC[This is to extract]";

    System.out.println(s);
    int startIndex = s.indexOf('[');
    System.out.println("indexOf([) = " + startIndex);
    int endIndex = s.indexOf(']');
    System.out.println("indexOf(]) = " + endIndex);
    System.out.println(s.substring(startIndex + 1, endIndex));

Answer 3

If there is only 1 occurrence, the answer of ivanovic is the best way I guess. But if there are many occurrences, you should use regexp:

\[(.*?)\] this is your pattern. And in each group(1) will get you your string.

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\[(.*?)\\]");
Matcher m = p.matcher(input);
while(m.find())
{
    m.group(1); //is your string. do what you want
}

Answer 4

Try as

String s = "ABC[ This is to extract ]";
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile(".*\\[ *(.*) *\\].*");
        Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
        m.find();
        String text = m.group(1);
        System.out.println(text);