java regex - matching part of string stored in variable

Question

I need to extract up to the directory a file is in, in the folder path. To do so, I created a simple regex. Here is an example path \\myvdi\Prod\2014\10\LTCG\LTCG_v2306_03_07_2014_1226.pfd

The regex below will find exactly what I need, but my problem is storing it into a variable. This is what I have below. It fails at the string array

  String[] temp = targetFile.split("\\.*\\");
  folder = temp[0];

Suggestions?

Thanks!

Edit The exception being thrown is: java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Unexpected internal error near index 4

Answer 1

If your path is valid within your file system, I would recommend not using regex and using a File object instead:

String path = "\\myvdi\\Prod\\2014\\10\\LTCG\\LTCG_v2306_03_07_2014_1226.pfd";
File file = new File(path);
System.out.println(file.getParent());

Output

\\myvdi\\Prod\\2014\\10\\LTCG\\

Answer 2

Simply, you need:

String path = "\\myvdi\\Prod\\2014\\10\\LTCG\\LTCG_v2306_03_07_2014_1226.pfd";
String dir = path.substring(0, path.lastIndexOf("\\") + 1);

Answer 3

You should use Pattern & Matchers which are much more powerful; from your description I'm not sure if you want to get the whole folder path, but if it is, here is a solution:

String s = "\\\\myvdi\\Prod\\2014\\10\\LTCG\\LTCG_v2306_03_07_2014_1226.pfd";

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("^(\\\\+[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+\\\\+([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+\\\\+)+).+$");
Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
if(m.matches()){

  System.out.println(m.group(m.groupCount()-1));
}