public static boolean usernameValidator(String username) {
String condition = "^[a-zA-Z]+.[a-zA-z]";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(condition);
Matcher m = p.matcher(username);
return m.matches();
}
I want the user to enter a certain format eg name.surname so only a-z or A-Z then . then a-z or A-Z again. When I do enter input in the certain format the method returns false. Am I using the syntax wrong
A few things going on here.
As I understand it, you want username to contain something of the form: <letters>.<letters>.
There are a few things wrong with your regular expression if that is what you are aiming for.
In the second set of square brackets ([]), you have written A-z rather than A-Z, and there should be a + afterwards. A + indicates you want one or more characters. Without it, the [a-zA-Z] only matches a single character.
The period is also a special character in regex (meaning any character) so you need to escape it with a back-slash \, but that is a special character used to escape other characters so you need a double backslash \\.
Hence, I think you are aiming for:
public static boolean usernameValidator(String username) {
String condition = "^[A-Za-z]+\\.[A-Za-z]+$";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(condition);
Matcher m = p.matcher(username);
return m.matches();
}
I've added the $ to indicate that you want to match to the end of a line since you have already included the ^ to match the start.
I don't believe either of these are necessary in this case so could reduce the regex to [A-Za-z]+\\.[A-Za-z]+.
If you are new to regular expressions, maybe have a read of one of the following pages:
JavaDocs for Pattern
W3Schools Java Regex
TutorialsPoint Java Regex
Related
I have a class that replaces all turkish symbols to similar latin symbols and pass the result to searcher.
these are the methods for symbol replacement
#Override
String replaceTurkish(String words) {
if (checkWithRegExp(words)) {
return words.toLowerCase().replaceAll("ç", "c").replaceAll("ğ", "g").replaceAll("ı", "i").
replaceAll("ö", "o").replaceAll("ş", "s").replaceAll("ü", "u");
} else return words;
}
public static boolean checkWithRegExp(String word){
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[öçğışü]");
Matcher m = p.matcher(word);
return m.matches();
}
But this always return unmodified words statement.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance!
Per the Java 7 api, Matcher.matches()
Attempts to match the entire region against the pattern.
Your pattern is "[öçğışü]", which regex101.com (an awesome resource) says will match
a single character in the list öçğışü literally
Perhaps you may see the problem already. Your regex is not going to match anything except a single Turkish character, since you are attempting to match the entire region against a regex which will only ever accept one character.
I recommend either using find(), per suggestion by Andreas in the comments, or using a regex like this:
".*[öçğışü].*"
which should actually find words which contains any Turkish-specific characters.
Additionally, I'll point out that regex is case-sensitive, so if there are upper-case variants of these letters, you should include those as well and modify your replace statements.
Finally (edit): you can make your Pattern case-insensitive, but your replaceAll's will still need to change to be case-insensitive. I am unsure of how this will work with non-Latin characters, so you should test that flag before relying on it.
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(".*[öçğışü].*", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Here is my Regex, I am trying to search all special characters so that I can escape them.
(\(|\)|\[|\]|\{|\}|\?|\+|\\|\.|\$|\^|\*|\||\!|\&|\-|\#|\#|\%|\_|\"|\:|\<|\>|\/|\;|\'|\`|\~)
My problem here is, I don't want to escape some sepcial characters only when the come in a sequence
like this (.*)
So, Lets consider an example.
Sting message = "Hi, Mr.Xyz! Your account number is :- (1234567890) , (,*) &$#%#*(....))(((";
After escaping according to current regex what i get is,
Hi, Mr\.Xyz\! Your account number is \:\- \(1234567890\) , \(,\*\) \&\$\#\%\#\*\(\.\.\.\.\)\)\(\(\(
But is don't want to escape this part (.*) want to keep it as it is.
My above regex is only used for searching, So i just don't want to match with this part (.*) and my problem will be solved
Can anyone suggest regex that doesn't escape that part of the string?
See #nhahtdh for how to do this with a regex.
As an alternative, Here is a solution which does not use a regex, using Guava's CharMatcher instead:
private static final CharMatcher SPECIAL
= CharMatcher.anyOf("allspecialcharshere");
private static final String NO_ESCAPE = "(.*)";
public String doEncode(String input)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(input.length());
String tmp = input;
while (!tmp.isEmpty()) {
if (tmp.startsWith(NO_ESCAPE)) {
sb.append(NO_ESCAPE);
tmp = tmp.substring(NO_ESCAPE.length());
continue;
}
char c = tmp.charAt(0);
if (SPECIAL.matches(c))
sb.append('\\');
sb.append(c);
tmp = tmp.substring(1);
}
return sb.toString();
}
This answer is to demonstrate the possibility only. Using it in production code is questionable.
It is possible with Java String replaceAll function:
String input = "Hi, Mr.Xyz! Your account number is :- (1234567890) , (.*) &$#%#*(....))(((";
String output = input.replaceAll("\\G((?:[^()\\[\\]{}?+\\\\.$^*|!&##%_\":<>/;'`~-]|\\Q(.*)\\E)*+)([()\\[\\]{}?+\\\\.$^*|!&##%_\":<>/;'`~-])", "$1\\\\$2");
Result:
"Hi, Mr\.Xyz\! Your account number is \:\- \(1234567890\) , (.*) \&\$\#\%\#\*\(\.\.\.\.\)\)\(\(\("
Another test:
String input = "(.*) sdfHi test message <> >>>>><<<<f<f<,,,,<> <>(.*) sdf (.*) sdf (.*)";
Result:
"(.*) sdfHi test message \<\> \>\>\>\>\>\<\<\<\<f\<f\<,,,,\<\> \<\>(.*) sdf (.*) sdf (.*)"
Explanation
Raw regex:
\G((?:[^()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]|\Q(.*)\E)*+)([()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-])
Note that \ is escaped once more when the regex is specified inside the string, and " needs to be escaped. The resulting regex in string can be seen above.
Raw replacement string:
$1\\$2
Since $ has special meaning in replacement string, and you want to keep it for $2, you need to escape the \ so that \ won't escape the $. And putting the replacement string in quoted string, you need to double up the number of \ to escape the \.
Before we dissect the monster, let's talk about the idea. We will consume non-special characters, and the sequence that we don't want to replace, and as many times as possible. The next character will either be a special character not forming sequence we don't want to replace, or is the end of the string (which means that we have found all character that needs replacing if any).
Naturally, we can think of any arbitrary string as consisting of many of the following pattern consecutively: [0 or more (non-special character or special pattern not to be replace)][special character], and the string ends with [0 or more (non-special character or special pattern not to be replace)].
replaceAll function when used with a regex without \G may find matches that are not consecutive, which can cut in the middle of the sequence not to be replaced and mess it up. \G means the boundary of last match, and can be used to make sure the next match starts from where the last match left off.
\G: Starts from last match
((?:[^()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]|\Q(.\*)\E)*+): Capture 0 or more of, the non-special character or the special pattern not to be replaced. Note that I have added the possessive qualifier + after *. This will prevent the engine from backtracking when it cannot find the special character that we specify after this.
[^()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]: Negated character class of special characters.
\Q(.*)\E: Special sequence (.*) not to be replaced, literal quoted by \Q and \E.
([()\[\]{}?+\\.$^*|!&##%_":<>/;'`~-]): Capture the single special character.
The whole regex will match string with minimum length of 1 (the special character). The first capturing group contains the parts that shouldn't be replaced, and the 2nd capturing group contains the special character that should be replaced.
I'm trying to match Strings that contain the word "#SP" (sans quotes, case insensitive) in Java. However, I'm finding using Regexes very difficult!
Strings I need to match:
"This is a sample #sp string",
"#SP string text...",
"String text #Sp"
Strings I do not want to match:
"Anything with #Spider",
"#Spin #Spoon #SPORK"
Here's what I have so far: http://ideone.com/B7hHkR .Could someone guide me through building my regexp?
I've also tried: "\\w*\\s*#sp\\w*\\s*" to no avail.
Edit: Here's the code from IDEone:
java.util.regex.Pattern p =
java.util.regex.Pattern.compile("\\b#SP\\b",
java.util.regex.Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
java.util.regex.Matcher m = p.matcher("s #SP s");
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Match!");
}
(edit: positive lookbehind not needed, only matching is done, not replacement)
You are yet another victim of Java's misnamed regex matching methods.
.matches() quite unfortunately so tries to match the whole input, which is a clear violation of the definition of "regex matching" (a regex can match anywhere in the input). The method you need to use is .find().
This is a braindead API, and unfortunately Java is not the only language having such misguided method names. Python also pleads guilty.
Also, you have the problem that \\b will detect on word boundaries and # is not part of a word. You need to use an alternation detecting either the beginning of input or a space.
Your code would need to look like this (non fully qualified classes):
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(^|\\s)#SP\\b", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher("s #SP s");
if (m.find()) {
System.out.println("Match!");
}
You're doing fine, but the \b in front of the # is misleading. \b is a word boundary, but # is already not a word character (i.e. it isn't in the set [0-9A-Za-z_]). Therefore, the space before the # isn't considered a word boundary. Change to:
java.util.regex.Pattern p =
java.util.regex.Pattern.compile("(^|\\s)#SP\\b",
java.util.regex.Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
The (^|\s) means: match either ^ OR \s, where ^ means the beginning of your string (e.g. "#SP String"), and \s means a whitespace character.
The regular expression "\\w*\\s*#sp\\w*\s*" will match 0 or more words, followed by 0 or more spaces, followed by #sp, followed by 0 or more words, followed by 0 or more spaces. My suggestion is to not use \s* to break words up in your expression, instead, use \b.
"(^|\b)#sp(\b|$)"
I want to remove all the leading and trailing punctuation in a string. How can I do this?
Basically, I want to preserve punctuation in between words, and I need to remove all leading and trailing punctuation.
., #, _, &, /, - are allowed if surrounded by letters
or digits
\' is allowed if preceded by a letter or digit
I tried
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(^\\p{Punct})|(\\p{Punct}$)");
Matcher m = p.matcher(term);
boolean a = m.find();
if(a)
term=term.replaceAll("(^\\p{Punct})", "");
but it didn't work!!
Ok. So basically you want to find some pattern in your string and act if the pattern in matched.
Doing this the naiive way would be tedious. The naiive solution could involve something like
while(myString.StartsWith("." || "," || ";" || ...)
myString = myString.Substring(1);
If you wanted to do a bit more complex task, it could be even impossible to do the way i mentioned.
Thats why we use regular expressions. Its a "language" with which you can define a pattern. the computer will be able to say, if a string matches that pattern. To learn about regular expressions, just type it into google. One of the first links: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9099/The-30-Minute-Regex-Tutorial
As for your problem, you could try this:
myString.replaceFirst("^[^a-zA-Z]+", "")
The meaning of the regex:
the first ^ means that in this pattern, what comes next has to be at
the start of the string.
The [] define the chars. In this case, those are things that are NOT
(the second ^) letters (a-zA-Z).
The + sign means that the thing before it can be repeated and still
match the regex.
You can use a similar regex to remove trailing chars.
myString.replaceAll("[^a-zA-Z]+$", "");
the $ means "at the end of the string"
You could use a regular expression:
private static final Pattern PATTERN =
Pattern.compile("^\\p{Punct}*(.*?)\\p{Punct}*$");
public static String trimPunctuation(String s) {
Matcher m = PATTERN.matcher(s);
m.find();
return m.group(1);
}
The boundary matchers ^ and $ ensure the whole input is matched.
A dot . matches any single character.
A star * means "match the preceding thing zero or more times".
The parentheses () define a capturing group whose value is retrieved by calling Matcher.group(1).
The ? in (.*?) means you want the match to be non-greedy, otherwise the trailing punctuation would be included in the group.
Use this tutorial on patterns. You have to create a regex that matches string starting with alphabet or number and ending with alphabet or number and do inputString.matches("regex")
How can I create a regular expression to search strings with a given pattern? For example I want to search all strings that match pattern '*index.tx?'. Now this should find strings with values index.txt,mainindex.txt and somethingindex.txp.
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("*.html");
Matcher m = pattern.matcher("input.html");
This code is obviously not working.
You need to learn regular expression syntax. It is not the same as using wildcards. Try this:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^.*index\\.tx.$");
There is a lot of information about regular expressions here. You may find the program RegexBuddy useful while you are learning regular expressions.
The code you posted does not work because:
dot . is a special regex character. It means one instance of any character.
* means any number of occurrences of the preceding character.
therefore, .* means any number of occurrences of any character.
so you would need something like
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(".*\\.html.*");
the reason for the \\ is because we want to insert dot, although it is a special regex sign.
this means: match a string in which at first there are any number of wild characters, followed by a dot, followed by html, followed by anything.
* matches zero or more occurrences of the preceding token, so if you want to match zero or more of any character, use .* instead (. matches any char).
Modified regex should look something like this:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("^.*\\.html$");
^ matches the start of the string
.* matches zero or more of any char
\\. matches the dot char (if not escaped it would match any char)
$ matches the end of the string