[Q#19751892][A#19751994] How to extract text between square brackets with String.split

https://stackoverflow.com/q/19751892

I have text which contains tags expressed in this format: [text other text]. I'd like to split the string using square brackets as separators, but this: This doesn't give expected results. How can I do this?

Answer

https://stackoverflow.com/a/19751994

I'm not sure if one can do this with split(). With pattern finding and [^\]]+ ("all symbols until the closing bracket") in your pattern this is quite straight-forward:

APIzation

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String line = "xx [text other text], [jili u babusi dva veselikh gusya], " +
        "[a granny there was having two gay gooses] zz";

    Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("\\[([^\\]]+)").matcher(line);

    List<String> tags = new ArrayList<>();

    int pos = -1;
    while (matcher.find(pos+1)){
        pos = matcher.start();
        tags.add(matcher.group(1));
    }

    System.out.println(tags);
}

package com.stackoverflow.api;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Human19751994 {

  public static List<String> getGroupsFromString(String regex, String line) {
    Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(regex).matcher(line);

    List<String> tags = new ArrayList<>();

    int pos = -1;
    while (matcher.find(pos + 1)) {
      pos = matcher.start();
      tags.add(matcher.group(1));
    }

    return tags;
  }
}

package com.stackoverflow.api;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

/**
 * How to extract text between square brackets with String.split
 *
 * @author APIzator
 * @see <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/19751994">https://stackoverflow.com/a/19751994</a>
 */
public class APIzator19751994 {

  public static List<String> extractText(String line) {
    Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("\\[([^\\]]+)").matcher(line);
    List<String> tags = new ArrayList<>();
    int pos = -1;
    while (matcher.find(pos + 1)) {
      pos = matcher.start();
      tags.add(matcher.group(1));
    }
    return tags;
  }
}