javaregexreluctant-quantifiers

Java reluctant matching from both sides of the quantifier

I would like to write a regex in java which will find the shortest available match from both sides of the quantifier.

For example, for this pattern "a.*?b" apllied to "aaaaaacbbbbbbb":

i would like to find "acb" but i get "aaaaaacb".

Anyone has an idea which regex i can use for that?

Solution

  • You could mimic reluctant matching from the start by discarding a greedy .*. In this case, this would become .*(a.*?b), if you get group number 1: 

    String example = "aaaaaacbbbbbbb";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile(".*(a.*?b)").matcher(example);
m.find();
System.out.println(m.group(1));