Java - regex any string between < and >

Question

I use a String where I need to get rid of any occurence of: < any string here >

I tried line = line.replaceAll("<[.]+>", "");

but it gives the same String... How can I delete the < any string between > substrings?

Remove the `[]`: `<.+>` - this is greedy though and may give you unexpected results. You should use `<.*?>` or `<[^>]*>`, but the latter is more correct. — ctwheels, Jan 09 '18 at 18:41

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 09 '18 at 18:45

2

line = line.replaceAll("<[^>]*>", "");

answered Jan 09 '18 at 18:45

Friederike

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score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 09 '18 at 18:49

As per my original comment...

Brief

Your regex <[.]+> says to match <, followed by the dot character . (literally) one or more times, followed by >

Removing [] will get you a semi-appropriate answer. The problem with this is that it's greedy, so it'll actually replace everything from the first occurrence of < to the last occurrence of > in the entire string (see the link to see it in action).

What you want is to either make the quantifier lazy or use a character class to ensure it's not going past the ending character.

Code

Method 1 - Lazy Quantifier

This method .*? matches any character any number of times, but as few as possible

See regex in use here

<.*?>

Method 2 - Character Set

This method [^>]* matches any character except > any number of times