My requirements include among other things to validate for the password input to include one of the following characters only once. !##$%^&*()_+=?~
To accomplish that I wrote the following:
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder("(?=.*[a-z])");
builder.append("(?=.{1}[!##$%^&*()_+=?~])");
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(builder.toString());
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
if(matcher.matches){
return True;
}
But this always fails when I pass valid input in my unit test. I am new to regex.
You may use this regex with 2 lookahead assertions:
^(?=[^a-z]*[a-z])(?=[^!##$%^&*()_+=?~]*[!##$%^&*()_+=?~][^!##$%^&*()_+=?~]*$).{12,}$
RegEx Demo
Note that in .matches() method start & end anchors are automatically implied in a given regex.
RegEx Details:
^: Start
(?=[^a-z]*[a-z]): Positive lookahead to make sure we have at least one lowercase letter
(?=[^!##$%^&*()_+=?~]*[!##$%^&*()_+=?~][^!##$%^&*()_+=?~]*$): Positive lookahead to make sure we have ONLY one of the given special character.
.{12,}: Match min 12 of any characters
$: End
Related
I am trying to match a multi line text using java. When I use the Pattern class with the Pattern.MULTILINE modifier, I am able to match, but I am not able to do so with (?m).
The same pattern with (?m) and using String.matches does not seem to work.
I am sure I am missing something, but no idea what. Am not very good at regular expressions.
This is what I tried
String test = "User Comments: This is \t a\ta \n test \n\n message \n";
String pattern1 = "User Comments: (\\W)*(\\S)*";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(pattern1, Pattern.MULTILINE);
System.out.println(p.matcher(test).find()); //true
String pattern2 = "(?m)User Comments: (\\W)*(\\S)*";
System.out.println(test.matches(pattern2)); //false - why?
First, you're using the modifiers under an incorrect assumption.
Pattern.MULTILINE or (?m) tells Java to accept the anchors ^ and $ to match at the start and end of each line (otherwise they only match at the start/end of the entire string).
Pattern.DOTALL or (?s) tells Java to allow the dot to match newline characters, too.
Second, in your case, the regex fails because you're using the matches() method which expects the regex to match the entire string - which of course doesn't work since there are some characters left after (\\W)*(\\S)* have matched.
So if you're simply looking for a string that starts with User Comments:, use the regex
^\s*User Comments:\s*(.*)
with the Pattern.DOTALL option:
Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("^\\s*User Comments:\\s+(.*)", Pattern.DOTALL);
Matcher regexMatcher = regex.matcher(subjectString);
if (regexMatcher.find()) {
ResultString = regexMatcher.group(1);
}
ResultString will then contain the text after User Comments:
This has nothing to do with the MULTILINE flag; what you're seeing is the difference between the find() and matches() methods. find() succeeds if a match can be found anywhere in the target string, while matches() expects the regex to match the entire string.
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("xyz");
Matcher m = p.matcher("123xyzabc");
System.out.println(m.find()); // true
System.out.println(m.matches()); // false
Matcher m = p.matcher("xyz");
System.out.println(m.matches()); // true
Furthermore, MULTILINE doesn't mean what you think it does. Many people seem to jump to the conclusion that you have to use that flag if your target string contains newlines--that is, if it contains multiple logical lines. I've seen several answers here on SO to that effect, but in fact, all that flag does is change the behavior of the anchors, ^ and $.
Normally ^ matches the very beginning of the target string, and $ matches the very end (or before a newline at the end, but we'll leave that aside for now). But if the string contains newlines, you can choose for ^ and $ to match at the start and end of any logical line, not just the start and end of the whole string, by setting the MULTILINE flag.
So forget about what MULTILINE means and just remember what it does: changes the behavior of the ^ and $ anchors. DOTALL mode was originally called "single-line" (and still is in some flavors, including Perl and .NET), and it has always caused similar confusion. We're fortunate that the Java devs went with the more descriptive name in that case, but there was no reasonable alternative for "multiline" mode.
In Perl, where all this madness started, they've admitted their mistake and gotten rid of both "multiline" and "single-line" modes in Perl 6 regexes. In another twenty years, maybe the rest of the world will have followed suit.
str.matches(regex) behaves like Pattern.matches(regex, str) which attempts to match the entire input sequence against the pattern and returns
true if, and only if, the entire input sequence matches this matcher's pattern
Whereas matcher.find() attempts to find the next subsequence of the input sequence that matches the pattern and returns
true if, and only if, a subsequence of the input sequence matches this matcher's pattern
Thus the problem is with the regex. Try the following.
String test = "User Comments: This is \t a\ta \ntest\n\n message \n";
String pattern1 = "User Comments: [\\s\\S]*^test$[\\s\\S]*";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(pattern1, Pattern.MULTILINE);
System.out.println(p.matcher(test).find()); //true
String pattern2 = "(?m)User Comments: [\\s\\S]*^test$[\\s\\S]*";
System.out.println(test.matches(pattern2)); //true
Thus in short, the (\\W)*(\\S)* portion in your first regex matches an empty string as * means zero or more occurrences and the real matched string is User Comments: and not the whole string as you'd expect. The second one fails as it tries to match the whole string but it can't as \\W matches a non word character, ie [^a-zA-Z0-9_] and the first character is T, a word character.
The multiline flag tells regex to match the pattern to each line as opposed to the entire string for your purposes a wild card will suffice.
Is there a regular expression that will capture all instances of an expression, regardless of whether or not they overlap?
E.g. in /abc/def/ghi if I want to capture all strings beginning with /. The regex (/.*) only returns the entire string, but I'd want it to match on /def/ghi and /ghi as well.
Sure, match an empty string and place a look-ahead after it that captures /.* in a capturing group:
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("(?=(/.*))").matcher("/abc/def/ghi");
while(m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group(1));
}
would print:
/abc/def/ghi
/def/ghi
/ghi
I am currently learning how to write regular expressions in Java by trying to match simple Hashtag pattern. The Hashtags obey the following conditions:
It starts with a hashtag: #
It has to contain at least 1 letter: [a-zA-Z]
It can contain any of the characters from the class [a-zA-Z0-9_]
It cannot be preceded by a character of the class [a-zA-Z0-9_]
Based on this, I thought that the correct regular expression is:
PATTERN = "(?<![a-zA-Z0-9_])#(?=.*[a-zA-Z])[a-zA-Z0-9_]+"
Here I'm using a lookahead (?=.*[a-zA-Z]) to make sure Condition 2 holds and using a lookbehind (?<![a-zA-Z0-9_]) to make sure Condition 4 holds. I'm less certain about ending with a +.
This works on simple test cases but fails on complicated ones such as:
String text = "####THIS_IS_A_HASHTAG; ;#This_1_2...#12_and_this but not #123 or #this# #or#that";
where does not match #THIS_IS_A_HASHTAG, #This_1_2 and 12_and_this
Could someone explain what I'm doing wrong?
This lookahead:
(?=.*[a-zA-Z])
may produce wrong results for the cases when input is like this:
####12345...#12_and_this
by giving you 2 matches #12345 and #12_and_this. Whereas as per your rules only 2nd should be valid match.
To fix this you can use this regex:
(?<![a-zA-Z0-9_])#(?=[0-9_]*[a-zA-Z])[a-zA-Z0-9_]+
Where lookahead (?=[0-9_]*[a-zA-Z]) means assert presence of a letter after # with optional presence of a digit or underscore in between.
Here is a regex demo for you
How about this?
(example here)
String text = "####THIS_IS_A_HASHTAG;;;#This_1_2...#12_and_this ";
String regex = "#[A-Za-z0-9_]+";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile(regex).matcher(text);
while (m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group());
}
It looks like it meets your criteria as stated:
#THIS_IS_A_HASHTAG
#This_1_2
#12_and_this
Although I read a large number of posts on the topic (in particular using lookarounds), I haven't understood if this more general case can be solved using regular expressions.
setup:
1) an input regex is passed in
2) the input regex is embedded in a negative regex so that
3) anything that is not identified by the input regex is matched
Example:
given:
input regex: "[-//s]";
and
text: "self-service restaurant"
I want a negative regex wherein to embed my input regex so that I can match my text as:
"self", "service", "restaurant"
Importantly, the negative regex should also be able to match a simple string like:
"restaurant"
Note, what I want to do could be achieved changing the input regex from
"[-//s]"
to
"[^-//s]"
Yet, I'm after a more general approach where any regular expression can be passed into a negative regex.
You could achieve this through matching or splitting.
Through matching.
String s = "self-service restaurant";
Matcher m = Pattern.compile("[^-\\s]+").matcher(s);
while(m.find()) {
System.out.println(m.group());
}
You need to put the pattern inside a negated character class to match all the chars except the one present inside the negated class.
Through splitting.
String s = "self-service restaurant";
String parts[] = s.split("[-\\s]+");
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(parts));
This would split your input according to one or more space or hyphen chars. Later you could join them to get your desired output.
Through replacing.
String s = "self-service restaurant";
System.out.println(s.replaceAll("[-\\s]+", "\\\n"));
My regexp below is supposed to filter out capital words with a length of 8-10, where 0-2 numbers may appear. It has been working for all of my tests, but for some reason it got stuck on the string below. And n.group(0) only contains an empty string instead of the matched "word".
static final Pattern PATTERN =
Pattern.compile("\\b(?=[A-Z\\d]{9,10}\\b)(?:[A-Z]*\\d){0,2}[A-Z]*\\b");
Matcher n = LONG_PASSWORD.matcher("foo ID:636152727 bar");
while (n.find()) {
String s = n.group(0);
resultArrayList.add(s);
}
Why does my pattern match ID:636152727?
Some examples that I want to filter out (which is working):
AAAAAAAAAA
1AAAAAAAAA
1AAAAAAAA1
etc...
I don't have a better solution to offer than the one in Ωmega's answer, but I think I can explain what's happening. What it boils down to is that the first \b and the last \b are matching the same spot: right after the colon.
That's the first place where the lookahead can match, since it's followed by nine digits and a word boundary. Then the next part of the regex tries to match two digits (interspersed with any number of uppercase letters) followed by a word boundary, and fails. So it tries to match just one digit (ditto), and fails again. Then it tries matching zero digits (interspersed with zero letters), and it succeeds, without advancing the match position. That position is still a word boundary, so the final \b succeeds as well.
A word boundary is just another zero-width assertion, like lookaheads and lookbehinds. There's no reason why two or more can't be applied at the same spot; you did that on purpose with the first word boundary and the lookahead. Some regex flavors treat it as an error if you apply a quantifier to an assertion (like \b+), but I don't think any of them would catch this problem. This is one of those rare instances where separate start-of-word and end-of-word assertions, like GNU's \< and \> or TCL's \y and \Y, would make a difference.
You need to use anchors ^ and $ »
Pattern.compile("^(?=[A-Z\\d]{9,10}$)(?:[A-Z]*\\d){0,2}[A-Z]*$");
Use this pattern:
"(?:^|(?<=\\s))(?=[A-Z\\d]{9,10}(?:\\s|$))(?:[A-Z]*\\d){0,2}[A-Z]*(?=\\s|$)"