Difference between \p{Alpha} and \p{L} in Java - java

As I get it \p{L} include all letters from Unicode symbols, \p{Alpha} is slightly the same but only for Latin letters(ASCII). At my work I have 'A' latin and 'A' cyrillic, and \p{Alpha} in old java code don't match cyrillic symbols as letters. As I test it the \p{L} is solution for me. Can you folks give me some advice for this situation and what i shoud use in java code? On this page http://www.regular-expressions.info/posixbrackets.html use \p{Alpha} for java code.

Actually, \p{Alpha} is a POSIX character class implementation that will match extended characters only when used in combination with UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS (or (?U) flag), while \p{L} will always match all Unicode letters from the BMP plane. Note you can write \p{L} as \pL or \p{IsL}.
See more reference details:
Both \p{L} and \p{IsL} denote the category of Unicode letters.
POSIX character classes (US-ASCII only)
\p{Lower} A lower-case alphabetic character: [a-z]
\p{Upper} An upper-case alphabetic character:[A-Z]
\p{Alpha} An alphabetic character:[\p{Lower}\p{Upper}]
Have a look at the following demo:
String l = "Abc";
String c = "Абв";
System.out.println(l.matches("\\p{Alpha}+")); // => true
System.out.println(c.matches("\\p{Alpha}+")); // => false
System.out.println(c.matches("(?U)\\p{Alpha}+")); // => true
System.out.println(l.matches("\\p{L}+")); // => true
System.out.println(c.matches("\\p{L}+")); // => true

Related

Java - \pL [\x00-\x7F]+ regex fails to get non English characters using String.match

I need to validate name,saved in a String, which can be in any language with spaces using \p{L}:
You can match a single character belonging to the "letter" category with \p{L}
I tried to use String.matches, but it failed to match non English characters, even for 1 character, for example
String name = "อั";
boolean isMatch = name.matches("[\\p{L}]+")); // return false
I tried with/without brackets, adding + for multiple letters, but it's always failing to match non English characters
Is there an issue using String.matches with \p{L}?
I failed also using [\\x00-\\x7F]+ suggested in Pattern
\p{ASCII} All ASCII:[\x00-\x7F]
You should bear in mind that Java regex parses strings as collections of Unicode code units, not code points. \p{L} matches any Unicode letter from the BMP plane, it does not match letters glued with diacritics after them.
Since your input can contain letters and diacritics you should at least use both \p{L} and \p{M} Unicode property classes in your character class:
String regex = "[\\p{L}\\p{M}]+";
If the input string can contain words separated with whitespaces, you may add \s shorthand class and to match any kind of whitespace you may compile this regex with Pattern.UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS flag:
String regex = "(?U)[\\p{L}\\p{M}\\s]+";
Note that this regex allows entering diacritics, letters and whitespaces in any order. If you need a more precise regex (e.g. diacritics only allowed after a base letter) you may consider something like
String regex = "(?U)\\s*(?>\\p{L}\\p{M}*+)+(?:\\s+(?>\\p{L}\\p{M}*+)+)*\\s*";
Here, (?>\\p{L}\\p{M}*+)+ matches one or more letters each followed with zero or more diacritics, \s* matches zero or more whitespaces and \s+ matches 1 or more whitespaces.
\p{IsAlphabetic} vs. [\p{L}\p{M}]
If you check the source code, \p{Alphabetic} checks if Character.isAlphabetic(ch) is true. It is true if the char belongs to any of the following classes: UPPERCASE_LETTER, LOWERCASE_LETTER, TITLECASE_LETTER, MODIFIER_LETTER, OTHER_LETTER, LETTER_NUMBER or it has contributory property Other_Alphabetic. It is derived from Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Nl + Other_Alphabetic.
While all those L subclasses form the general L class, note that Other_Alphabetic also includes Letter number Nl class, and it includes more chars than \p{M} class, see this reference (although it is in German, the categories and char names are in English).
So, \p{IsAlphabetic} is broader than [\p{L}\p{M}] and you should make the right decision based on the languages you want to support.
The only solution I found is using \p{IsAlphabetic}
\p{Alpha} An alphabetic character:\p{IsAlphabetic}
boolean isMatch = name.matches("[ \\p{IsAlphabetic}]+"))
Which doesn't work in sites as https://regex101.com/ in demo
There are two characters there. The first is a letter, the second is a non-letter mark.
String name = "\u0e2d";
boolean isMatch = name.matches("[\\p{L}]+"); // true
works, but
String name = "\u0e2d\u0e31";
boolean isMatch = name.matches("[\\p{L}]+"); // false
does not because ั U+E31 is a Non-Spacing Mark [NSM], not a letter.
Googled that character to find the language. Seems to be Thai. Thai Unicode character range is: 0E00 to 0E7F:
When you are working with unicode characters you can use \u. So, the regex should be look like this:
[\u0E00-\u0E7F]
Which is match in this REGEX test with your character.
If you want to match any languages use this:
[\p{L}]
Which is match in this REGEX test with your example characters.
Try including more categories:
[\p{L}\p{Mn}\p{Mc}\p{Nl}\p{Pc}\p{Pd}\p{Po}\p{Sk}]+
Note that it might be best to simply not validate names. People can't really complain if they entered it wrong but your system didn't catch it. However, it's much more of a problem if someone is unable to enter their name. If you do insist on adding validation, please make it overridable: that should have the advantages of each method without their disadvantages.

Validate a string that can contain any characters, but letters from a specific alphabet/script

I have this string
String s = "Some text, some text!"
I need check string, and if this string have character from other language, like Hebrew or Russian then return false, otherwise if string have only english char(optional with spaces and punct) return true. Of cource string like this String s = ", , ." must return false.
I was try this code
Pattern pEng = Pattern.compile("\\p{Alpha}+\\p{Space}*\\p{Punct}*\\p{Digit}*");
pEng.matcher(s).matches()
but its return false
What i do wrong? Already spend many time for find answer, who can help?
To match a string that only contains ASCII chars and has at least one ASCII letter, you may use
s.matches("[\\p{ASCII}&&[^A-Za-z]]*[A-Za-z]\\p{ASCII}*")
See this Java demo
If you do not want to allow control chars in the input, use a variation of the pattern:
s.matches("[ -~&&[^A-Za-z]]*[A-Za-z][ -~]*")
See this Java demo.
Note that .matches requires a full string match, hence, there is no need adding ^ and $ / \z anchors around the pattern.
Pattern details
[ -~&&[^A-Za-z]]* - 0 or more printable ASCII chars except ASCII letters (&&[^...] is a character class subtraction, it is here to make the pattern work faster, more efficiently)
[A-Za-z] - an ASCII letter (=\p{Alpha})
[ -~]* - 0 or more printable ASCII chars.
The \p{ASCII} Unicode property class matches any ASCII chars.
Additional info
If you need to match a string with only certain script/alphabet letters and any other chars in a string, you may use
s.matches("\\P{L}*(?:[A-Za-z]\\P{L}*)+")
This [A-Za-z] is for English, for Russian, you would use [а-яА-ЯёЁ].
Now, say you want to only match a string whose letters can only be Hebrew letters inside. Since \p{InHebrew} contains all Hebrew script, not just letters, you would use an intersection of this class and a letter \p{L} class, [\p{InHebrew}&&[\p{L}]]:
str.matches("\\P{L}*(?:[\\p{InHebrew}&&[\\p{L}]]\\P{L}*)+")
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

What is the equivalent in .Net of the :print: character class from PHP or Java? [duplicate]

Is there a special regex statement like \w that denotes all printable characters? I'd like to validate that a string only contains a character that can be printed--i.e. does not contain ASCII control characters like \b (bell), or null, etc. Anything on the keyboard is fine, and so are UTF chars.
If there isn't a special statement, how can I specify this in a regex?
Very late to the party, but this regexp works: /[ -~]/.
How? It matches all characters in the range from space (ASCII DEC 32) to tilde (ASCII DEC 126), which is the range of all printable characters.
If you want to strip non-ASCII characters, you could use something like:
$someString.replace(/[^ -~]/g, '');
NOTE: this is not valid .net code, but an example of regexp usage for those who stumble upon this via search engines later.
If your regex flavor supports Unicode properties, this is probably the best the best way:
\P{Cc}
That matches any character that's not a control character, whether it be ASCII -- [\x00-\x1F\x7F] -- or Latin1 -- [\x80-\x9F] (also known as the C1 control characters).
The problem with POSIX classes like [:print:] or \p{Print} is that they can match different things depending on the regex flavor and, possibly, the locale settings of the underlying platform. In Java, they're strictly ASCII-oriented. That means \p{Print} matches only the ASCII printing characters -- [\x20-\x7E] -- while \P{Cntrl} (note the capital 'P') matches everything that's not an ASCII control character -- [^\x00-\x1F\x7F]. That is, it matches any ASCII character that isn't a control character, or any non-ASCII character--including C1 control characters.
TLDR Answer
Use this Regex...
\P{Cc}\P{Cn}\P{Cs}
Working Demo
In this demo, I use this regex to search the string "Hello, World!_". I'm going to add a weird character at the end, (char)4 — this is the character for END TRANSMISSION.
using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
public class Test {
public static void Main() {
// your code goes here
var regex = new Regex(#"![\P{Cc}\P{Cn}\P{Cs}]");
var matches = regex.Matches("Hello, World!" + (char)4);
Console.WriteLine("Results: " + matches.Count);
foreach (Match match in matches) {
Console.WriteLine("Result: " + match);
}
}
}
Full Working Demo at IDEOne.com
TLDR Explanation
\P{Cc} : Do not match control characters.
\P{Cn} : Do not match unassigned characters.
\P{Cs} : Do not match UTF-8-invalid characters.
Alternatives
\P{C} : Match only visible characters. Do not match any invisible characters.
\P{Cc} : Match only non-control characters. Do not match any control characters.
\P{Cc}\P{Cn} : Match only non-control characters that have been assigned. Do not match any control or unassigned characters.
\P{Cc}\P{Cn}\P{Cs} : Match only non-control characters that have been assigned and are UTF-8 valid. Do not match any control, unassigned, or UTF-8-invalid characters.
\P{Cc}\P{Cn}\P{Cs}\P{Cf} : Match only non-control, non-formatting characters that have been assigned and are UTF-8 valid. Do not match any control, unassigned, formatting, or UTF-8-invalid characters.
Source and Explanation
Take a look at the Unicode Character Properties available that can be used to test within a regex. You should be able to use these regexes in Microsoft .NET, JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, Perl, Golang, and even Adobe. Knowing Unicode character classes is very transferable knowledge, so I recommend using it!
All Matchable Unicode Character Sets
If you want to know any other character sets available, check out regular-expressions.info...
\p{L} or \p{Letter}: any kind of letter from any language.
\p{Ll} or \p{Lowercase_Letter}: a lowercase letter that has an uppercase variant.
\p{Lu} or \p{Uppercase_Letter}: an uppercase letter that has a lowercase variant.
\p{Lt} or \p{Titlecase_Letter}: a letter that appears at the start of a word when only the first letter of the word is capitalized.
\p{L&} or \p{Cased_Letter}: a letter that exists in lowercase and uppercase variants (combination of Ll, Lu and Lt).
\p{Lm} or \p{Modifier_Letter}: a special character that is used like a letter.
\p{Lo} or \p{Other_Letter}: a letter or ideograph that does not have lowercase and uppercase
\p{M} or \p{Mark}: a character intended to be combined with another character (e.g. accents, umlauts, enclosing boxes, etc.).
\p{Mn} or \p{Non_Spacing_Mark}: a character intended to be combined with another
character without taking up extra space (e.g. accents, umlauts, etc.).
\p{Mc} or \p{Spacing_Combining_Mark}: a character intended to be combined with another character that takes up extra space (vowel signs in many Eastern languages).
\p{Me} or \p{Enclosing_Mark}: a character that encloses the character it is combined with (circle, square, keycap, etc.).
\p{Z} or \p{Separator}: any kind of whitespace or invisible separator.
\p{Zs} or \p{Space_Separator}: a whitespace character that is invisible, but does take up space.
\p{Zl} or \p{Line_Separator}: line separator character U+2028.
\p{Zp} or \p{Paragraph_Separator}: paragraph separator character U+2029.
\p{S} or \p{Symbol}: math symbols, currency signs, dingbats, box-drawing characters, etc.
\p{Sm} or \p{Math_Symbol}: any mathematical symbol.
\p{Sc} or \p{Currency_Symbol}: any currency sign.
\p{Sk} or \p{Modifier_Symbol}: a combining character (mark) as a full character on its own.
\p{So} or \p{Other_Symbol}: various symbols that are not math symbols, currency signs, or combining characters.
\p{N} or \p{Number}: any kind of numeric character in any script.
\p{Nd} or \p{Decimal_Digit_Number}: a digit zero through nine in any script except ideographic scripts.
\p{Nl} or \p{Letter_Number}: a number that looks like a letter, such as a Roman numeral.
\p{No} or \p{Other_Number}: a superscript or subscript digit, or a number that is not a digit 0–9 (excluding numbers from ideographic scripts).
\p{P} or \p{Punctuation}: any kind of punctuation character.
\p{Pd} or \p{Dash_Punctuation}: any kind of hyphen or dash.
\p{Ps} or \p{Open_Punctuation}: any kind of opening bracket.
\p{Pe} or \p{Close_Punctuation}: any kind of closing bracket.
\p{Pi} or \p{Initial_Punctuation}: any kind of opening quote.
\p{Pf} or \p{Final_Punctuation}: any kind of closing quote.
\p{Pc} or \p{Connector_Punctuation}: a punctuation character such as an underscore that connects words.
\p{Po} or \p{Other_Punctuation}: any kind of punctuation character that is not a dash, bracket, quote or connector.
\p{C} or \p{Other}: invisible control characters and unused code points.
\p{Cc} or \p{Control}: an ASCII or Latin-1 control character: 0x00–0x1F and 0x7F–0x9F.
\p{Cf} or \p{Format}: invisible formatting indicator.
\p{Co} or \p{Private_Use}: any code point reserved for private use.
\p{Cs} or \p{Surrogate}: one half of a surrogate pair in UTF-16 encoding.
\p{Cn} or \p{Unassigned}: any code point to which no character has been assigned.
There is a POSIX character class designation [:print:] that should match printable characters, and [:cntrl:] for control characters. Note that these match codes throughout the ASCII table, so they might not be suitable for matching other encodings.
Failing that, the expression [\x00-\x1f] will match through the ASCII control characters, although again, these could be printable in other encodings.
In Java, the \p{Print} option specifies the printable character class.
It depends wildly on what regex package you are using. This is one of these situations about which some wag said that the great thing about standards is there are so many to choose from.
If you happen to be using C, the isprint(3) function/macro is your friend.
Adding on to #Alan-Moore, \P{Cc} is actually as example of Negative Unicode Category or Unicode Block (ref: Character Classes in Regular Expressions). \P{name} matches any character that does not belong to a Unicode general category or named block. See the referred link for more examples of named blocks supported in .Net

Multiple underscores at the end using REGEX? [duplicate]

http://regexr.com/3ars8
^(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[A-z])[0-9A-z-]{17}$
Should match "17 alphanumeric chars, hyphens allowed too, must include at least one letter and at least one number"
It'll correctly match:
ABCDF31U100027743
and correctly decline to match:
AB$DF31U100027743
(and almost any other non-alphanumeric char)
but will apparently allow:
AB^DF31U100027743
Because your character class [A-z] matches this symbol.
[A-z] matches [, \, ], ^, _, `, and the English letters.
Actually, it is a common mistake. You should use [a-zA-Z] instead to only allow English letters.
Here is a visualization from Expresso, showing what the range [A-z] actually covers:
So, this regex (with i option) won't capture your string.
^(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[a-z])[0-9a-z-]{17}$
In my opinion, it is always safer to use Ignorecase option to avoid such an issue and shorten the regex.
regex uses ASCII printable characters from the space to the tilde range.
Whenever we use [A-z] token it matches the following table highlighted characters. If we use [ -~] token it matches starting from SPACE to tilde.
You're allowing A-z (capital 'A' through lower 'z'). You don't say what regex package you're using, but it's not necessarily clear that A-Z and a-z are contiguous; there could be other characters in between. Try this instead:
^(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[A-Za-z])[0-9A-Za-z-]{17}$
It seems to meet your criteria for me in regexpal.

Java Regular Expression with International Letters

Here's my current code:
return str.matches("^[A-Za-z\\-'. ]+");
I want it to include international letters. How do I do that in Java?
Thanks.
It seems that you want is, to match all the alphabetic characters. Typically you would do that by using Posix \p{Alpha} expression, extended by the punctuation you want also to permit. As Java Regular Expressions documentation says, it matches ASCII only.
However, what documentation does not say clearly is, you can make this class work with Unicode characters. To do just that you need to turn Unicode character class matching on.
You can do this in one of two ways:
By creating Pattern object passing the UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS constant:
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("^[p{Alpha}\\-'. ]+", UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS);
By using (?U) embedded pattern flag:
str.matches("^(?U)[\\p{Alpha}\\-'. ]+");
Prove of concept:
String[] test = {"Jean-Marie Le'Blanc", "Żółć", "Ὀδυσσεύς", "原田雅彦"};
for (String str : test) {
System.out.print(str.matches("^(?U)[\\p{Alpha}\\-'. ]+") + " ");
}
The obvious result is:
true true true true
If you think that all is correct, I have two additional points to make:
原田雅彦 (Masahiko Harada) is composed of Ideographic characters. In fact they are not the alphabetic characters,
You want to match the dot (.) symbol. It's OK, but please consider matching Ideographic fullstops as well.
I assume you want to match alphanumeric characters other than the ASCII letters A-Z. You can do this with the \p{IsAlphabetic} Unicode character class:
return str.matches("^[\\p{IsAlphabetic}\\-'. ]+");
You'll find more Unicode character classes the full documentation.
Replace the pattern with:
"^[\\p{L}\\-'. ]+"
\p{L} includes all unicode letters.
Use the regex \P{L} to match any letters (national or international)
By adding [\p{L}&&[^\p{IsLatin}]], you can match all letters that are not latin.
Especially for Greek, regex has \p{InGreek} to match Greek letters and \P{InGreek}(the difference is capital P) to match non Greek letters.
The question cannot be answered completely unless you say what you mean by "international letters", but the general solution is to use named character classes, via the \p{name} syntax. There are many named character classes. Some are defined by the regex language, and others by the Unicode standard. Refer to the Pattern javadocs for a partial list, and to the relevant Unicode standard.

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