how to remove special characters and to get two dates from given string?

Question

public class Remove {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String s="[From:14 02 1986,To:14 02 2016]";
    System.out.println(s);
  }
}

Is the width/format of your input date string always the same? — Tim Biegeleisen, Feb 28 '17 at 06:15
I might start by splitting the string by `,` then each of the resulting strings by `:` — MadProgrammer, Feb 28 '17 at 06:17
Welcome to Stack Overflow! We are a question-and-answer site, not a coders-for-hire service. Please explain what you have tried so far and why it hasn't worked. See: [Why is "Can someone help me?" not an actual question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/284236) — Joe C, Feb 28 '17 at 06:18
@MadProgrammer Or use a regex, or a series of substrings. Without further information, we don't know. — Tim Biegeleisen, Feb 28 '17 at 06:18
@TimBiegeleisen I was going down the simplest route, but they are all viable options :P — MadProgrammer, Feb 28 '17 at 06:19
Here is a regex pattern to parse: From:(\d\d) (\d\d) (\d\d\d\d),To:(\d\d) (\d\d) (\d\d\d\d) — betontalpfa, Feb 28 '17 at 06:19
Sorry, this is not the way StackOverflow works. Questions of the form _"I want to do X, please give me tips and/or sample code"_ are considered off-topic. Please visit the [help] and read [ask], and especially read [Why is “Can someone help me?” not an actual question?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/284236/18157) — Jim Garrison, Feb 28 '17 at 06:21

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 28 '17 at 06:24

Here is a solution with regex:

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

public class Remove {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String s="[From:14 02 1986,To:14 02 2016]";

        Pattern r = Pattern.compile("From:(\\d\\d \\d\\d \\d\\d\\d\\d),To:(\\d\\d \\d\\d \\d\\d\\d\\d)");

        Matcher m = r.matcher(s);
        if (m.find( )) {
            System.out.println("From date : " + m.group(1) );
            System.out.println("To date   : " + m.group(2) );
        }else {
            System.out.println("NO MATCH");
        }


    }

}

umutto · Answer 2 · 2017-02-28T06:31:07.473

You can use string.split() to get the dates;

String[] dates = s.split(",");

That will give you a string array ["From:14 02 1986", "To:14 02 2016"] then clean the unnecesary text from splits;

for (int i = 0; i < dates .length; i++) {
    dates[i] = dates[i].substring(dates[i].indexOf(":") + 1)
}

This will remove "From:" and "To:" from array, making it:["14 02 1986", "14 02 2016"], then cast them to DateTime using DateFormat;

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("dd MM yyyy");
for (String date: dates) {
    println(formatter.parseDateTime(date))
}

Edit: just saw the square brackets at the beginning and end of your string, you can remove them in same manner.

how to remove special characters and to get two dates from given string?

2 Answers2