String parsing having Special characters

I have a String in this form:

String buf = "[[[name11,name12]][[name21,name22]][[name31,name32]]]";

How can I retrieve all the names?

When i retreive data from database i recive it i开发者_如何学Gon this form.

Looking for Java Solution.

Thanks

This trick should do it:

String csv = buf.replace("[[[","").replace("]]]","").replace("]][[",",");
String[] names = csv.split(",");

It removes the leading and trailing brackets and replaces the inner brackets with a comma. Now you can split the input around , and have an array with the names only.

You can use the Scanner class in Java to parse the data.

Do you always have pairs of names? Is it possible to have [[name2,]]?

If the names always come in pairs then Andreas_D response is a simple straight forward answer. If one of the names may be missing then you need to add a couple of replace() calls in front to look for these and put dummy values in. Specifically "[," with "[dummyFirst," and ",]" with ",dummyLast]". You would then have to process these dummy values according to whatever rules are appropriate for your context.