JAVA RegEx

07/09/15

Recap
A regular expression-- a pattern that
describes or matches a set of strings

E.g. ca[trn]

Matched text chunk of text which

matches the regular expression.

E.g. ca[trn] matches car, can, cat

Recap
Metacharacters -$ ^ . \ [] \( \) + ?
Sets [aeiou] and [bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz]
Negation using (^) e.g. [^ab^8]
Repeated match- using * and +

E.g. a* or [a-z]*

Thank you !

Java and RegEx

Package java.util.regex
Description

Classes for matching character

sequences against patterns specified by
regular expressions.

java.util.regex

java.util.regex.Pattern

java.util.regex.Matcher

import java.util.regex.*
Why this Package?
What it contains?
How to use this Package?
What this Package can do?

Why this Package

Everything in Java should be an
object of some class.
Regular expressions are an
important part of many applications
Note : Regex Package was only introduced

after JDK1.4

Regular expressions (RegEx) tend to

be easier to write than they are to read

What it contains
The Package defines 2 classes

Pattern A regular expression, specified

as a string, must first be compiled into
an instance of this class

Matcher - An engine that performs match

operations on a character sequence by
interpreting a Pattern

How to use java.util.regex

Step 1 : Import
import java.util.regex.*;

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

What can it do

Match Regular
Expressions
(Duh!!!)

But how?
compile regular expression into an instance of
Pattern using Pattern.compile(regex)

Eg. Pattern pat = Pattern.compile([ab]c*d");

Use the resulting pattern to create a Matcher

object using <pattern-name>.matcher(input)

Eg. Matcher matcher = pat.matcher("accccd");

Find if the pattern pat matched

Eg. boolean isMatch = matcher.matches();

All this can also be done by

boolean isMatch = Pattern.matches([ab]c*d",

accccd");
Demo

Deep Waters
Both Pattern and Matcher classes
provide various functions
Most of the common operations
are provided as functions

Pattern Functions
staticPattern compile(Stringregex)
Compiles the given regular
expression into a pattern
Matcher matcher(CharSequence
input)
Creates a matcher that will match
the given input against this pattern.

String pattern()
Returns the regular expression from
which this pattern was compiled.
String[] split(CharSequenceinput)
Splits the given input sequence
around matches of this pattern.

staticboolean matches(String
regex, CharSequenceinput)
Compiles the given regular
expression and attempts to match
the given input against it.

Matcher functions
boolean find()
Attempts to find the next subsequence of the
input sequence that matches the pattern.
boolean lookingAt()
Attempts to match the input sequence,
starting at the beginning, against the pattern.
boolean matches()
Attempts to match the entire input sequence
against the pattern.

Pattern pattern()
Returns the pattern that is interpreted by
this matcher.
String replaceAll(Stringreplacement)
Replaces every subsequence of the input
that matches the pattern with the given
string.
String replaceFirst(Stringreplacement)
Replaces the first subsequence of the input
that matches the pattern with the given
string.

Int start()
Returns the start index of the
previous match.
int end()
Returns the index of the last
character matched, plus one.

Thank You!