Splitting of String delimited by '[' and ']'

Question

I have some sampel data written on a file. The data are in the following format -

[Peter Jackson] [UK] [United Kingdom] [London]....

I have to extract the information delimited by '[' and ']'. So that I found -

Peter Jackson  
UK  
United Kingdom  
London  
...
...

I am not so well known with string splitting. I only know how to split string when they are only separated by a single character (eg - string1-string2-string3-....).

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:34

2

You can use this regex:

\\[(.+?)\\]

And the captured group will have your content.

Sorry for not adding the code. I don't know java

answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:34

Amit Joki

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In Java it would be string.split(regex) – Brian J Apr 27 '14 at 16:36
1

@BrianJ: No, you will have to use a matcher to find the matches. – Bhesh Gurung Apr 27 '14 at 16:38

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:41

2

You should use regex for this.

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\[(.*?)\\]");
Matcher results = p.matcher("[Peter Jackson] [UK] [United Kingdom] [London]....");

while (results.find()) {
    System.out.println(results.group(1));
}

answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:41

wns349

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Bryan · Answer 3 · 2014-04-27T16:59:50.213

Is each item separated by spaces? if so, you could split by "\] \[" then replace all the left over brackets:

    String vals = "[Peter Jackson] [UK] [United Kingdom] [London]";
    String[] list = vals.split("\\] \\[");
    for(String str : list){
        str = str.replaceAll("\\[", "").replaceAll("\\]", "");
        System.out.println(str); 
    }

Or if you want to avoid a loop you could use a substring to remove the beginning and ending brackets then just separate by "\\] \\[" :

    String vals = " [Peter Jackson] [UK] [United Kingdom] [London] ";
    vals = vals.trim(); //removes beginning whitspace
    vals = vals.substring(1,vals.length()-1); // removes beginning and ending bracket
    String[] list = vals.split("\\] \\[");

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:35

1

Try to replace

    String str = "[Peter Jackson] [UK] [United Kingdom] [London]";
    str = str.replace("[", "");
    str = str.replace("]", "");

And then you can try to split it.

answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:35

eliasah

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That *removes* the (important!) separators! You cannot reliably split the remaining string anymore. – Jongware Apr 27 '14 at 16:39
True, didn't think about that! so you have to split before you replace then – eliasah Apr 27 '14 at 16:41

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:43

1

Splitting on "] [" should sort you, as in:

\] \[

Regular expression visualization

Debuggex Demo

After this, just replace the '[' and the ']' and join using newline.

answered Apr 27 '14 at 16:43

hd1

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Splitting of String delimited by '[' and ']'

5 Answers5