Pattern/Matcher in Java?
- by user1007059
I have a certain text in Java, and I want to use pattern and matcher to extract something from it. This is my program:
public String getItemsByType(String text, String start, String end) {
String patternHolder;
StringBuffer itemLines = new StringBuffer();
patternHolder = start + ".*" + end;
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternHolder);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
while (matcher.find()) {
itemLines.append(text.substring(matcher.start(), matcher.end())
+ "\n");
}
return itemLines.toString();
}
This code works fully WHEN the searched text is on the same line, for instance:
String text = "My name is John and I am 18 years Old";
getItemsByType(text, "My", "John");
immediately grabs the text "My name is John" out of the text. However, when my text looks like this:
String text = "My name\nis John\nand I'm\n18 years\nold";
getItemsByType(text, "My", "John");
It doesn't grab anything, since "My" and "John" are on different lines. How do I solve this?
