Using Regular Expressions

I am having problems trying to use the regular expression that I used in JavaScript. On a web page, you may have:

<b>Renewal Date:</b> 03 May 2010</td>

I just want to be able to pull out the 03 May 2010, remembering that a webpage has more than just the above content. The way I currently perform this using JavaScript is:

DateStr = /<b>Renewal Date:</b>(.+?)</td>/.exec(returnedHTMLPage);

I tried to follow some tutorials on java.util.regex.Pattern and java.util.regex.Matcher with no luck. I can’t seem to be able to translate (.+?) into something they can understand??

thanks,

Noeneel

Answer

This is how regular expressions are used in Java:

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<b>Renewal Date:</b>(.+?)</td>");
Matcher m = p.matcher(returnedHTMLPage);

if (m.find()) // find the next match (and "generate the groups")
    System.out.println(m.group(1)); // prints whatever the .+? expression matched.

There are other useful methods in the Matcher class, such as m.matches(). Have a look at Matcher.