Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are used to define string patterns that can be used to search, manipulate and edit a text. These terms are also referred to as Regex(an acronymfor Regular expressions).

In the below example, the regular expression .*book.* is used for searching the occurrence of string “book” in the text.

import java.util.regex.*;  
class MyRegexExample{   
   public static void main(String args[]){   
    String content = "I am Ashish " + 
      "from Bangalore"; 
    String pattern = ".*from.*"; 
    boolean isMatch = Pattern.matches(pattern, content); 
    System.out.println("The text contains 'from'? " + isMatch); 
   } 
}   

Output:

The text contains 'from'? true 

We'll learn how to identify patterns and how to use them in this tutorial. There are two primary classes in the java.util.regex API (the package we need to import while dealing with Regex).

1. java.util.regex.Pattern – Used for defining patterns
2. java.util.regex.Matcher – Used for performing match operations on text using patterns

java.util.regex.Pattern class:

Pattern.matches()

We have already seen the usage of this method in the above example where we performed the search for string “book” in a given text. This is one of the simplest and easiest ways of searching for a String in a text using Regex.

String content = "This is a tutorial Website!"; 
String patternString = ".*tutorial.*"; 
boolean isMatch = Pattern.matches(patternString, content); 
System.out.println("The text contains 'tutorial'? " + isMatch); 

As you can see we have used matches() method of Pattern class to search for the pattern in the given text. The pattern .*tutorial.* allows zero or more characters at the beginning and end of the String “tutorial” (the expression .* is used for zero and more characters).

Limitations: This way we can search for a single occurrence of a pattern in a text. For matching multiple occurrences you should use the Pattern.compile() method (discussed in the next section).

Pattern.compile()

In the above example we searched for a string “tutorial” in the text, that is a case sensitive search, however if you want to do a CASE INSENSITIVE search or want to do multiple occurrences of search, then you may need to first compile the pattern using Pattern.compile() before searching it in text. This is how this method can be used for this case.

String content = "This is a tutorial Website!"; 
String patternString = ".*tuToRiAl."; 
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternString, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE); 

Here we have used a flag Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE for case insensitive search, there are several other flags that can be used for different-2 purposes.

Pattern.matcher()

In the above section we learnt how to get a Pattern instance using compile() method. Here we will learn How to get Matcher instance from Pattern instance by using matcher() method.

String content = "This is a tutorial Website!"; 
String patternString = ".*tuToRiAl.*"; 
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternString, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE); 
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(content); 
boolean isMatched = matcher.matches(); 
System.out.println("Is it a Match?" + isMatched); 

Output:

Is it a Match?true 

Pattern.split()

To split a text into multiple strings based on a delimiter (Here delimiter would be specified using regex), we can use Pattern.split() method. This is how it can be done.

import java.util.regex.*;   
class RegexExample2{   
public static void main(String args[]){   
    String text = "ThisIsChaitanya.ItISMyWebsite"; 
    // Pattern for delimiter 
    String patternString = "is"; 
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternString, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE); 
    String[] myStrings = pattern.split(text); 
    for(String temp: myStrings){ 
      System.out.println(temp); 
  } 
  System.out.println("Number of split strings: "+myStrings.length); 
}} 

Output:

Th 

Chaitanya.It 
MyWebsite 
Number of split strings: 4 

The second split String is null in the output.

java.util.regex.Matcher Class

We have already discussed a little bit about Matcher class above. Let’s recall a few things:

Creating a Matcher Instance

String content = "Some text"; 
String patternString = ".*somestring.*"; 
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patternString); 
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(content); 

Main methods

1. matches(): It matches the regular expression against the whole text passed to the Pattern.matcher() method while creating a Matcher instance.

... 
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(content); 
boolean isMatch = matcher.matches(); 

2. lookingAt(): Similar to matches() method except that it matches the regular expression only against the beginning of the text, while matches() search in the whole text.

3. find(): Searches the occurrences of the regular expressions in the text. Mainly used when we are searching for multiple occurrences.

4.start() and end(): Both these methods are generally used along with the find() method. They are used for getting the start and end indexes of a match that is being found using find() method.

Let’s take an example to find out the multiple occurrences using Matcher methods:

package beginnersbook.com; 
import java.util.regex.*;   
class RegexExampleMatcher{   
public static void main(String args[]){   
  String content = "ZZZ AA PP AA QQQ AAA ZZ"; 
  String string = "AA"; 
  Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(string); 
  Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(content); 
  while(matcher.find()) { 
    System.out.println("Found at: "+ matcher.start() 
+  
" - " + matcher.end()); 
  } 
} 
} 

Output:

Found at: 4 - 6 
Found at: 10 - 12 
Found at: 17 - 19 

Now we are familiar with Pattern and Matcher class and the process of matching a regular expression against the text. Let’s see what kind of options we have to define a regular expression:

String Literals

Let’s say you just want to search a particular string in the text for e.g. “abc”; then we can simply write the code like this: Here text and regex both are the same.

Pattern.matches("abc", "abc") 

Character Classes

A character class matches a single character in the input text against multiple allowed characters in the character class. For example [Cc]haitanya would match all the occurrences of String “chaitanya” with either lower case or upper case C”. Few more examples:

1. Pattern.matches("[pqr]", "abcd"); It would give false as no p,q or r in the text
2. Pattern.matches("[pqr]", "r"); Return true as r is found
3. Pattern.matches("[pqr]", "pq"); Return false as any one of them can be in text not both.
4. Here is the complete list of various character classes constructs:
5. [abc]: It would match with text if the text is having either one of them(a,b or c) and only once.
6. [^abc]: Any single character except a, b, or c (^ denote negation)
7. [a-zA-Z]: a through z, or A through Z, inclusive (range)
8. [a-d[m-p]]: a through d, or m through p: [a-dm-p] (union)
9. [a-z&&[def]]: Any one of them (d, e, or f)
10. [a-z&&[^bc]]: a through z, except for b and c: [ad-z] (subtraction)
11. [a-z&&[^m-p]]: a through z, and not m through p: [a-lq-z] (subtraction)

Predefined Character Classes – Metacharacters

These are like short codes which you can use while writing regex.

ConstructDescription 
.   ->Any character (may or may not match line terminators) 
\d  ->A digit: [0-9] 
\D  ->A non-digit: [^0-9] 
\s  ->A whitespace character: [ \t\n\x0B\f\r] 
\S  ->A non-whitespace character: [^\s] 
\w  ->A word character: [a-zA-Z_0-9] 
\W  ->A non-word character: [^\w] 

For e.g.Pattern.matches("\\d", "1"); would return true

Pattern.matches("\\D", "z"); returns true

Pattern.matches(".p", "qp"); returns true, dot(.) represents any character

Boundary Matchers

^Matches the beginning of a line. 
$Matches then end of a line. 
\bMatches a word boundary. 
\BMatches a non-word boundary. 
\AMatches the beginning of the input text. 
\GMatches the end of the previous match 
\ZMatches the end of the input text except the final terminator if any. 
\zMatches the end of the input text. 

For e.g.Pattern.matches("^Hello$", "Hello"): returns true, Begins and ends with Hello

Pattern.matches("^Hello$", "Namaste! Hello"): returns false, does not begin with Hello

Pattern.matches("^Hello$", "Hello Namaste!"): returns false, Does not end with Hello

Quantifiers

GreedyReluctantPossessiveMatches 
X?X??X?+Matches X once, or not at all (0 or 1 time). 
X*X*?X*+Matches X zero or more times. 
X+X+?X++Matches X one or more times. 
X{n}X{n}?X{n}+Matches X exactly n times. 
X{n,}X{n,}?X{n,}+Matches X at least n times. 
X{n, m)X{n, m)? X{n, m)+Matches X at least n time, but at most m times. 

Examples:

import java.util.regex.*;   
class RegexExample{   
public static void main(String args[]){   
   // It would return true if string matches exactly "tom" 
   System.out.println( 
    Pattern.matches("tom", "Tom")); //False 
/* returns true if the string matches exactly  
    * "tom" or "Tom" 
    */ 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("[Tt]om", "Tom")); //True 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("[Tt]om", "Tom")); //True 
/* Returns true if the string matches exactly "tim"  
    * or "Tim" or "jin" or "Jin" 
    */ 
System.out.println( 
Pattern.matches("[tT]im|[jJ]in", "Tim"));//True 
System.out.println( 
Pattern.matches("[tT]im|[jJ]in", "jin"));//True 
/* returns true if the string contains "abc" at  
    * any place 
    */ 
System.out.println( 
Pattern.matches(".*abc.*", "deabcpq"));//True 
/* returns true if the string does not have a  
    * number at the beginning 
    */ 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("^[^\\d].*", "123abc")); //False 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("^[^\\d].*", "abc123")); //True 
// returns true if the string contains of three letters 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]", "aPz"));//True 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]", "aAA"));//True 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]", "apZx"));//False 
// returns true if the string contains 0 or more non-digits 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("\\D*", "abcde")); //True 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("\\D*", "abcde123")); //False 
/* Boundary Matchers example 
    * ^ denotes start of the line 
    * $ denotes end of the line 
    */ 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("^This$", "This is Chaitanya")); //False 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("^This$", "This")); //True 
System.out.println( 
  Pattern.matches("^This$", "Is This Chaitanya")); //False 
} 
}