Cannot retrive a group from Scala Regex match - regex

Question

I am struggling with regexps in Scala (2.11.5), I have a followin string to parse (example):
val string = "http://sth.com/sth/56,57597,14058913,Article_title,,5.html"
I want to extract third numeric value in the string above (it needs to be third after a slash because there can be other groups following), in order to do that I have the following regex pattern:
val pattern = """\/\d+,\d+,(\d+)""".r
I have been trying to retrieve the group for the third sequence of digits, but nothing seems to work for me.
val matchList = pattern.findAllMatchIn(string).foreach(println)
val matchListb = pattern.findAllIn(string).foreach(println)
I also tried using matching pattern.
string match {
case pattern(a) => println(a)
case _ => "What's going on?"
}
and got the same results. Either whole regexp is returned or nothing.
Is there an easy way to retrieve a group form regexp pattern in Scala?

Answer 1

You can use group method of scala.util.matching.Regex.Match to get the result.
val string = "http://sth.com/sth/56,57597,14058913,Article_title,,5.html"
val pattern = """\/\d+,\d+,(\d+)""".r
val result = pattern.findAllMatchIn(string) // returns iterator of Match
.toArray
.headOption // returns None if match fails
.map(_.group(1)) // select first regex group
// or simply
val result = pattern.findFirstMatchIn(string).map(_.group(1))
// result = Some(14058913)
// result will be None if the string does not match the pattern.
// if you have more than one groups, for instance:
// val pattern = """\/(\d+),\d+,(\d+)""".r
// result will be Some(56)

Answer 2

Pattern matching is usually the easiest way to do it, but it requires a match on the full string, so you'll have to prefix and suffix your regex pattern with .*:
val string = "http://sth.com/sth/56,57597,14058913,Article_title,,5.html"
val pattern = """.*\/\d+,\d+,(\d+).*""".r
val pattern(x) = string
// x: String = 14058913