Java string - get everything between (but not including) two regular expressions?

Question

In Java, is there a simple way to extract a substring by specifying the regular expression delimiters on either side, without including the delimiters in the final substring

Answer 1

Write a regex like this:

"(regex1)(.*)(regex2)"

... and pull out the middle group from the matcher (to handle newlines in your pattern you want to use Pattern.DOTALL).

Using your example we can write a program like:

package test;

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Regex {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile(
                "(.*)",
                Pattern.DOTALL
            );

        Matcher matcher = p.matcher(
                "Header\n\n\ntext"
            );

        if(matcher.matches()){
            System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
        }
    }

}

Which when run prints out:

Header


text