I'm writing a piece of Groovy that needs to capture multiple instances of a pattern in a string. Specifically, the string should look something like this:
"Blah blah blah blah key1:value1 key2:value2 blah blah blah key3:value3"
I need to capture: key1:value1, key2:value2 & key3:value3.
I think the regex should look something like this
def regex = ~/[^|\s](.+:.*)[$|\s|\n]/
What do I need to do to capture all instances of the pattern in the string?
If your "items" are separted by a blank (and no item contains a blank on its own) you could use this:
def somestring = "Blah blah blah blah key1:value1 key2:value2 blah blah blah key3:value3"
assert somestring.split().findAll{it.contains ':'} == ["key1:value1", "key2:value2", "key3:value3"]
Of course this gives you only the "key:value" items as strings. (Although splitting the key from the value is another trivial step.) Maybe you can specify your requirements a little more detailed.
def regex = ~/(?is)[a-z0-9_]+:[^\s]*/
This regex will match instances like Key1:Value1, My_Key:My_value, or Key2: (without a value).
(?is) makes the match case insensitive and makes newline characters (which separate lines) match with \n and \r\n. [a-z0-9_]+ matches any sequence of leters, digits, and underscores on the left side of a "key1:value1" pair. Add extra characters to the brackets to match a larger variety of possible key names. [^\s]* matches the longest sequence of characters after the ":", before you reach a white space (like a space, tab, or end of line). It will also return "Key1:" if there is no value on the right, so use + instead of * if you'd prefer not to match if the value is missing.
String ans = str.findAll( /(?is)[a-z0-9_]+:[^\s]*/ ) should return a vector of all the matching terms.
def machter = yourstring =~ regex With that matcher you can access each match in a collection like way: assert matcher[0] == "key1:value1"; assert matcher[1] == "key2:value2"; assert matcher[2] == "key3:value3"; Have a look at the documentation: groovy.codehaus.org/Regular+ExpressionsYou could also try :
def s = "Blah blah blah blah key1:value1 key2:value2 blah blah blah key3:value3"
def m = s =~ /(([^\s]+):([^\s]+))/
m.collect { x -> x.drop( 2 ) }.collectEntries()
