I'm trying to get first match for number in brackets and expect to get 123, but:
String str = "ABC 123-(456)-(789)"; String regex = ".*\\((\\d+)\\).*"; Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex); Matcher m = p.matcher(str); m.find(); System.out.println(m.group(1)); // "789" Please help.
I found workaround but without matcher:
String[] arr = str.split("[\\(\\)]"); for (String s : arr) { if (s.matches("[-+]?\\d+")) { return s; } } Problem with your regex is that by default * quantifier is greedy, which means it will try to match as much as he can. Since you used it with .* it means that it will try to match max of any characters since that is what . represents (except line separators).
So your regex .*\((\d+)\).* will match
ABC 123-(456)-(789) .* -^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ((\d+)\) ---------------^^^^^ .* -empty To change behavior of * and make it reluctant add ? like .*?.
But in your case it looks like you should remove .* from your regex since you probably don't actually want to match part which they describe. So try with
String regex = "\\((\\d+)\\)"; and for string like "ABC 123-(456)-(789)" you should get result 456 - since it is first result matching this regex. To move to text result 789 you need to use find method again.
So your code can look like:
private static final Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\((\\d+)\\)"); //we make Pattern static field since to avoid recompiling //same pattern each time we call our method static String myFind(String text){ Matcher m = p.matcher(text); if (m.find()){ return m.group(1); }else{ return null;//or empty string, or maybe throw exception } } 
Try this regex \\b((?<number>\\d+)\\b) like this:
String str = "ABC (123) (456) (678)" ; Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\b((?<number>\\d+)\\b)"); Matcher m = p.matcher(str); m.find(); System.out.println(m.group()); Output:
123 
...may contain some important information. Post minimal but complete code which will let us reproduce your problem.[0-9].