Regex - discard text after comma character

Question

If I have the text:

test: firstString, blah: anotherString, blah:lastString

How can I get the text "firstString"

My regex is:

 test:(.*),

EDIT Which brings back firstString, blah: anotherString, but I only need to bring back the text 'firstString'?

p.s.w.g · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-04T17:09:45.173

12

Use a non-greedy quantifier:

test:(.*?),

Or a character class:

test:([^,]*),

To ignore the comma as well:

test:([^,]*)

If you'd like to omit the test: as well you can use a look-behind like this:

(?<=test:\s)[^,]*

Since you're using this grok debugger, I was able to get this to work by using a named capture group:

(?<test>(?<=test:\s)[^,]*)

edited Dec 04 '13 at 17:09

answered Dec 03 '13 at 16:59

p.s.w.g

this is bring back the text "test: firstString" how can I get just the "firstString"? – user86834 Dec 04 '13 at 16:11
@user86834 Just extract the first capture group: See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Matcher.html#group(int) – p.s.w.g Dec 04 '13 at 16:12
I'm not using the Java API for this one. – user86834 Dec 04 '13 at 16:19
@user86834 I assumed since the question is tagged with Java, you were using the Java API. What are you using instead? – p.s.w.g Dec 04 '13 at 16:22
@user86834 Well, I'm not familiar with that at all, but you could try using a look-behind: `(?<=test:\s*)[^,]*` – p.s.w.g Dec 04 '13 at 16:31
This is the best i have which is very close, there is just a colon to omit: (?(:([^,]*))) – user86834 Dec 04 '13 at 16:33
@user86834 After playing around in the debugger, I got a pattern that worked. See my updated answer. – p.s.w.g Dec 04 '13 at 17:10

1 Answers1