The raw data is:
auser1 home1b
auser2 home2b
auser3 home3b
I want to match a line, but it doesn\'t work using ^(.*?)$
By default, ^
and $
match the start- and end-of-input respectively. You'll need to enable MULTI-LINE mode with (?m)
, which causes ^
and $
to match the start- and end-of-line:
(?m)^.*$
The demo:
import java.util.regex.*;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String text = "auser1 home1b\n" +
"auser2 home2b\n" +
"auser3 home3b";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(?m)^.*$").matcher(text);
while (m.find()) {
System.out.println("line = " + m.group());
}
}
}
produces the following output:
line = auser1 home1b line = auser2 home2b line = auser3 home3b
The fact that ^.*$
didn't match anything is because the .
by default doesn't match \r
and \n
. If you enable DOT-ALL with (?s)
, causing the .
to match those as well, you'll see the entire input string being matched:
(?s)^.*$
In this case, you mind as well drop the ^
and $
and simply look for the pattern .*
. Since .
will not match \n
, you'll end up with the same matches when looking for (?m)^.*$
, as @Kobi rightfully mentioned in the comments.
we can also use the flag MULTILINE
,
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("^.*$",Pattern.MULTILINE).matcher(text);
This will enable the multiline mode which will gave you the expected result.