Using Regular Expressions to Extract a Value in Java

Full example:

private static final Pattern p = Pattern.compile("^([a-zA-Z]+)([0-9]+)(.*)");
public static void main(String[] args) {
    // create matcher for pattern p and given string
    Matcher m = p.matcher("Testing123Testing");

    // if an occurrence if a pattern was found in a given string...
    if (m.find()) {
        // ...then you can use group() methods.
        System.out.println(m.group(0)); // whole matched expression
        System.out.println(m.group(1)); // first expression from round brackets (Testing)
        System.out.println(m.group(2)); // second one (123)
        System.out.println(m.group(3)); // third one (Testing)
    }
}

Since you're looking for the first number, you can use such regexp:

^\D+(\d+).*

and m.group(1) will return you the first number. Note that signed numbers can contain a minus sign:

^\D+(-?\d+).*

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

public class Regex1 {
    public static void main(String[]args) {
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\d+");
        Matcher m = p.matcher("hello1234goodboy789very2345");
        while(m.find()) {
            System.out.println(m.group());
        }
    }
}

Output:

1234
789
2345

Tags:

Java

Regex