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

Question

This question already has answers here:

java regular expression to extract content within square brackets (3 answers)

How do I split a string in Java? (38 answers)

Closed 9 years ago.

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-....).

Answer 1

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));
}

Answer 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

Answer 3

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("\\] \\[");

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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

\] \[

Debuggex Demo

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