How to fetch substring using regular expression

Question

Hi,
I am new to using regular expression and would like to know some basic details of how to use them in Java.
I have a String example= "http://www.google.com/foobar.html#*q*=database&aq=f&aqi=g10&fp=c9fe100d9e542c1e" and would like to get the value of "q" parameter (in bold) using regular expression in java.
For the same example, when we tried using javascript:
match = example.match("/^http:\/\/(?:(?!mail\.)[^\.]+?\.)?google\.[^\?#]+(?:.*[\?#&](?:as_q|q)=([^&]+))?/i}");
document.write('
' + match);
We are getting the output as: http://www.google.com/foobar.html#q=database,*database* where the bold text is the value of "q" parameter.
In Java we are trying to get the value of the q parameter separately or atleast resembles the output given by JavaScript. Please help me resolving this issue.
Regards
Praveen

Answer 1

BalusC wrote:
Regex is a cumbersome solution for fixed patterns like URL's. String#substring() in combination with String#indexOf would most likely already suffice.I usually agree, although, in this case, finding the exact parameter might be difficult without a small regex, perhaps:
"\\wq=\\s*"in conjunction with Pattern/Matcher, used similarly to an indexOf() to find the start of the parameter value.
Winston