Parse string based on pattern

Question

I'm trying to make a small prog that extracts a song's artist from its filename based on a specified pattern.
Something like this:
public String getArtist(String filename, string pattern) {
String artist = getArtist("The artist - the title.mp3", "artist - title");
artist = getArtist("01 - Another title - Another artist.mp3", "track - title - artist");Any good ideas on how to implement getArtist would be appreciated... :)

Answer 1

heres my idea of how to solve it...
this solution is not complete, but you may perfect it any way you like... it's just a quick and dirty hack ;)
import java.util.regex.*;
public class ArtistProblem {
public static void main(String[] args) {
  if (args.length == 2) {
   System.out.println(getArtist(args[0], args[1]));
  } else {
   System.out.println(getArtist("The artist - the title.mp3", "artist - title"));
   System.out.println(getArtist("01 - Another title - Another artist.mp3", "track - title - artist"));
public static String getArtist(String filename, String pattern) {
  // change track to regex that matces any spaces nad word characters
  pattern = pattern.replaceAll("track", "[\\\\w ]*");
  // change title to regex that matces any spaces nad word characters
  pattern = pattern.replaceAll("title", "[\\\\w ]*");
  // remove extention from the end of filename
  filename = filename.replaceAll("\\.mp3$", "");
  // change artist to regex that groups matched pattern
  pattern = pattern.replaceAll("artist", "([\\\\w ]*)");
  Pattern patt = Pattern.compile(pattern);
  Matcher matcher = patt.matcher(filename);
  if (matcher.find()) {
   return matcher.group(1);
  } else {
   // no match was found, so we return empty string
   return "";
}try running it so:
java ArtistProblem "the artist - the track - the title.mp3" "artist - track - title"
and you'll get:
the artist
i hope that gives you a jumpstart to some direction.