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Im going to start by posting what the data from the text file looks like, this is just 4 lines of it, the actually file is a couple hundred lines long.

Friday, September  9 2011        5:00AM - 11:59PM       STH 1102                HOLD DO NOT BOOK                                                 
Report Printed on 9/08/2011 at  2:37 PM   Page 1 of 1 

Friday, September  9 2011        5:00AM - 11:00PM       STH 4155 (BOARDROOM)    HOLD - DO NOT BOOK                     
Hold - Do Not Book        Report Printed on 9/08/2011 at  2:37 PM   Page 1 of 1 

Friday, September  9 2011        5:00AM - 11:59PM       UC 2 (COMPUTER LAB)     HOLD DO NOT BOOK                       
do not book               Report Printed on 9/08/2011 at  2:37 PM   Page 1 of 1 

Friday, September  9 2011        5:00PM - 11:00PM       AH GYM                  USC ORIENTATION 2011 - REVISED         
USC Orientation 2011      Report Printed on 9/08/2011 at  2:37 PM   Page 1 of 1

Each little section of text is on one line in the text file, separated by many spaces which dont show up in the question format for some reason, I will use the first section of text as an example of what data I am trying to get.

Here is the data Id like to get from the file Friday, 5:00, 11:59, STH 1102, HOLD DO NOT BOOK, and then ignore the read of the line, all the info on the 2nd line of the section of text is too be ignored, but in the text file itself it is all on one line. and then with this data, I would like to save each piece into a variable. Or instead the part of the data that says HOLD DO NOT BOOK is sometimes formatted like this: DO NOT BOOK, HOLD - DO NOT BOOK, if the regex finds any of theses it can ignore all the data in that line before and after.

Also if you I could I would like to take the times that have PM in them and add 12 to them so they are in 24 hour format.

Here is how I am currently reading the lines entirely. And then I just call this function once the user has put the path in the scheduleTxt JTextfield. It can read and print each line out fine. 

public void readFile () throws IOException
    {
        try
        {
            FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream(scheduleTxt.getText());
            DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(fstream);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
            String strLine;
            while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null)   
            {
                        System.out.println (str1);      
            }
            in.close();
        }
        catch (Exception e){
            System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }

I know theres in this question, hopefully you understand what Im asking, if something is unclear just ask, Thanks! Beef.

Update: I just thought maybe it would help to explain my intentions for this data, first off I will be converting any PM times into 24 hour format, and then according to the 4th piece of data(STH 1102) I call a insert function that will use the ODBC driver in order to insert the other data from the line into a database

Beef
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  • "Fields" in the lines are at fixed places? Looks like the first fields (that you want) are at fixed places, so don't need regex, only substring at that places. – David Oliván Sep 15 '11 at 13:58
  • yes I guess they are all at fixed places, but the text file with be changing everyday so I think I'd rather do the regex search incase the fixed places changes, also if the first timefield is 10,11, or 12 its place will be 1 position earlier than if it is 1-9 – Beef Sep 15 '11 at 14:03

2 Answers2

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Those look like tabs between the fields. If I were you, I'd use non-regex text manipulation to split the first of every three lines on the \t character. That should give you STH 1102 and HOLD DO NOT BOOK without any further processing.

That leaves Friday, 5:00, and 11:59. You can still get those with text manipulation: Split Friday, September on the comma and take the first segment, then split 5:00AM - 11:59PM on the string - (a hyphen with spaces around it).

If you still want regexes for those, you can use "[A-Za-z]+(?=,)" and "(\\d{1,2}:\\d{2}[PA]M) - (\\d{1,2}:\\d{2}[PA]M)", respectively. The second pattern will return the times you want in capture groups 1 and 2.

Regex for the whole thing is probably not the best way to do it, but this will probably work:

"^([^,]+),.*\\t(\\d{1,2}:\\d{2}[PA]M) - (\\d{1,2}:\\d{2}[PA]M)\\t([^\\t]+)\\t([^\\t]+)$"

Values you want will be in capture groups 1 - 5.

Edit:

Since you've indicated that those aren't tabs between the groups, the above regex won't work as-is. However, that probably means that the fields are at fixed positions. Find out at which index each group starts, then use String.substring to select everything from there to the next group and String.trim the result. You can then process the day-of-week and time portions as I described above: "[A-Za-z]+(?=,)" and "(\\d{1,2}:\\d{2}[PA]M) - (\\d{1,2}:\\d{2}[PA]M)", or non-regex string manipulation.

Also, if there is in fact a tab before the first "time" value, that might mess up the positioning. Split the string on that tab and use the substring method I described on the right-hand portion. The left-hand portion can be split on , to find the day of the week.

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Justin Morgan - On strike
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  • I just checked if they were in fact tabs, but they are not tab, the only data that falls on a tab is the first time data, I wish I could show you the actual text file its self but each line is way too long to fit into a single screen shot, and the regex line didnt work, I dont know if its cause I didnt mention that there is also abunch of white space before Friday – Beef Sep 15 '11 at 14:37
  • so when you say at which index each group starts do you mean like the `Friday` starts 30 spaces in and then `5:00` starts 86 spaces in? and so on – Beef Sep 15 '11 at 14:58
  • @Beef - Doesn't `Friday` start at position 0? You would want to parse each line separately. The index I was talking about was the position in the string where a particular value starts, so it's the number you would feed to `String.substring`. Does that make sense? – Justin Morgan - On strike Sep 15 '11 at 15:04
  • nah, in the actual text file it doesnt start at 0, I had to reduce the amount of spaces between all the data significantly to reduce the clutter somewhat in the question, Im not sure I understand completely, Im pretty sure I understand the use of `substring` and `trim` just not how to use `substring` in this situation, from my understand its used to make a large string and break it down on certain character similar to the explode function in php however without the array part of it – Beef Sep 15 '11 at 15:10
  • Example: If the `STH 1102` part always starts at position 80 in the line, and `HOLD DO NOT BOOK` starts at position 100, you would do something like `String roomNumber = line.substring(80, 99).trim(); String className = line.substring(100).trim();` – Justin Morgan - On strike Sep 15 '11 at 15:13
  • Example of `String.substring` usage: http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/String.html – Justin Morgan - On strike Sep 15 '11 at 15:14
  • okay, I understand a lot better now, I posted an update on the question of my intentions for all this data, and then for the times, if the start time is single digit it starts at 30 but if its a double digit like 10-12 it starts at 29 – Beef Sep 15 '11 at 15:18
  • The endpoint of a given field doesn't matter, only the starting point of the *next* field. For the room number, take everything from the beginning of `STH 1102` all the way up to the position right before `HOLD DO NOT BOOK`. You should get `STH 1102` with a lot of whitespace after it. Then use `String.trim()` as in my example. That trims the whitespace off the ends, and you have your value. Same thing with the times: Start at position 29, then trim the whitespace off and you've got what you want. – Justin Morgan - On strike Sep 15 '11 at 15:24
  • Alright well you have helped me out a lot, I will play around and try some things you mentioned out before I ask some more questions, thanks for the help, much appreciated – Beef Sep 15 '11 at 15:32
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I think it's worth splitting the text using StringTokenizer or String.split() and accessing each section by it's position in the string. A regex is going to be just as fragile and far more complicated to write.