import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(".*'([^']*)'.*");
        String mydata = "some string with 'the data i want' inside";

        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(mydata);
        if(matcher.matches()) {
            System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
        }

    }
}

String dataIWant = mydata.replaceFirst(".*'(.*?)'.*", "$1");

因为你还勾选了Scala，这是一个没有regex的解决方案，可以轻松处理多个带引号的字符串:

val text = "some string with 'the data i want' inside 'and even more data'"
text.split("'").zipWithIndex.filter(_._2 % 2 != 0).map(_._1)

res: Array[java.lang.String] = Array(the data i want, and even more data)

在javascript中:

mydata.match(/'([^']+)'/)[1]

实际的regexp是:/'([^']+)'/

如果你使用非贪婪修饰符(另一篇文章)，它是这样的:

mydata.match(/'(.*?)'/)[1]

它更干净。

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(".*'([^']*)'.*");
        String mydata = "some string with 'the data i want' inside";

        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(mydata);
        if(matcher.matches()) {
            System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
        }

    }
}

假设你想要单引号之间的部分，使用一个Matcher正则表达式:

"'(.*?)'"

例子:

String mydata = "some string with 'the data i want' inside";
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("'(.*?)'");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(mydata);
if (matcher.find())
{
    System.out.println(matcher.group(1));
}

结果:

the data i want