Help withRegular Expressions in java!

Question

Hi All,
I've written some code using the java.util.regex package to try capture some text from a text file. An example of the code is written below:
// Regexp that will try match in test file
        //Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("//s*(//d+)//s*");           // won't match
        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(".*");                             // matches
        try {
            BufferedReader input =  new BufferedReader(new FileReader(aFile));
            try
                String line = null;
                while (( line = input.readLine()) != null)
                    System.out.println(line);
                    // Use regexp to extract test name from text file
                    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(line);
                    System.out.println(matcher.lookingAt() );
            finally
                input.close();
        catch (IOException ex) {
          ex.printStackTrace();
        }The lines of the text file are of the follwing form:
Number SomeText MoreText Number
e.g.
234   testname    50000 If I try capture certain parts of of a line, like the commented out pattern above trying to capture the number, it doesn't match. But if I use the ".*" to capture the whole line it matches. I can't understand why the first pattern doesn't work! Any help in figuring this out would be greatly appreciated!
thanks.

Answer 1

Melanie_Green wrote:
I often refer back to this trusty resource [regex in Java|http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/regex/index.html]
MelI still use the test harness from that tutorial sometimes when I'm trying to formulate a regex.