I'm trying to extract a date from a String, but I'm not getting it.
Example:
String stringQualquer = "um teste qualquer12/02/1998 19/09/1880 Nulo";
I want to get the first date of this example "12/02/1998".
I tried that, but it did not work:
^(\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4})
The character ^ means string start, meaning your string would have to start with the given pattern.
Only (\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4}) is sufficient.
To get the first one, just do not advance the matcher:
String stringQualquer = "um teste qualquer12/02/1998 19/09/1880 Nulo";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4})");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(stringQualquer);
if(matcher.find()) {
System.out.println(matcher.group()); // printa 12/02/1998
}
Your regex is correct, but ^ is an anchor and indicates that you will perform the match at the beginning of String .
For the String in question the ideal is to match the first occurrence of a date with no modifier like the g that is global, see the example below:
(\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4})
Your regex will only work if the date is at the beginning of the string, try to take the "^" from the front.