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Jenkins pipeline groovy store matched regex string in variable

I have a string in a jenkinsfile and I am trying to create a new variable based on a regex match of that string. For example:

def stringA = "Hello World Today"

def stringB = stringA =~ /Hello/

echo stringB

I expect to see Hello echo in the console but I only get what seems to be a reference to a regex object.

I cannot seem to achieve what I am trying.

Solution

  • In this situation, stringB would indeed be assigned a value of a regular expression object. You need to use the syntax to capture a substring within the regular expression. This is () in Groovy and most other interpreted languages as well:

    def stringB = stringA =~ /(Hello)/

    The value of stringB at this point would be a nested array where each element is an array containing values for the matching substring of each () within the regular expression. In this situation, there is only one (), so we access the zeroth element and then the nested element containing the substring for the match, which is the element at one:

    print stringB[0][1]

    This will return Hello.