Java Regex matching between curly braces

Question

I need to parse a log file and get the times and associated function call string This is stored in the log file as so: {\"time\" : \"2012-09-24T03:08:50\", \"message\" : \"C

Answer 1

Braces are special regex characters used for repetition groups, therefore you must escape them.

Pattern logEntry = Pattern.compile("\\{(.*?)\\}");

Simple tester:

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String x =  "{\"time\" : \"2012-09-24T03:08:50\", \"message\" : \"Call() started\"}";
        Pattern logEntry = Pattern.compile("\\{(.*?)\\}");
        Matcher matchPattern = logEntry.matcher(x);

        while(matchPattern.find()) {
            System.out.println(matchPattern.group(1));
        }

    }

Gives me:

"time" : "2012-09-24T03:08:50", "message" : "Call() started"