Java regex error - Look-behind group does not have an obvious maximum length

java regex lookbehind
user963263 picture user963263 · Sep 25, 2011 · Viewed 18k times · Source

I get this error:

java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Look-behind group does not have an
    obvious maximum length near index 22
([a-z])(?!.*\1)(?<!\1.+)([a-z])(?!.*\2)(?<!\2.+)(.)(\3)(.)(\5)
                      ^

I'm trying to match COFFEE, but not BOBBEE.

I'm using java 1.6.

Answer

luobo25 picture luobo25 · Dec 13, 2011

To avoid this error, you should replace + with a region like {0,10}:

([a-z])(?!.*\1)(?<!\1.{0,10})([a-z])(?!.*\2)(?<!\2.{0,10})(.)(\3)(.)(\5)

Related questions

How to match "any character" in regular expression?

The following should be matched: AAA123 ABCDEFGH123 XXXX123 can I do: ".*123" ?

Read More
How to extract a substring using regex

I have a string that has two single quotes in it, the ' character. In between the single quotes is the data I want. How can I write a regex to extract "the data i want" from the following text? …

Read More
Split Java String by New Line

I'm trying to split text in a JTextArea using a regex to split the String by \n However, this does not work and I also tried by \r\n|\r|n and many other combination of regexes. Code: public void …

Read More