

Pattern class also provides split(String) method that is similar to String class split() method.For example Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE enables case insensitive matching. We can create a Pattern object with flags.

Now we will look at some important methods of Pattern and Matcher classes. Try to understand this scenario for statement 3 and 4 yourself. Due to the same reason the second statement prints false.

So \1 is referring to “a2” and hence it returns true. In the first example, at runtime first capturing group is (\w\d) which evaluates to “a2” when matched with the input String “a2a2” and saved in memory. You can use Backreference in the regular expression with a backslash (\) and then the number of the group to be recalled.Ĭapturing groups and Backreferences can be confusing, so let’s understand this with an example. For example, ((a)(bc)) contains 3 capturing groups – ((a)(bc)), (a) and (bc) . You can use oupCount method to find out the number of capturing groups in a java regex pattern. The portion of input String that matches the capturing group is saved into memory and can be recalled using Backreference. Regular Expression in Java Capturing groups is used to treat multiple characters as a single unit. Regular Expression in Java – Capturing Groups We will discuss about Capturing Group now. (abc)+ means the group “abc” one more more times.

Java Regex Quantifiers can be used with character classes and capturing groups also.įor example, + means – a, b, or c – one or more times. X occurs at least n times but not more than m times Java Regex Quantifiers specify the number of occurrence of a character to match against.
#Regular expression not and and code#
So if your requirement is just to check if the input String matches with the pattern, you should save time and lines of code by using simple String matches method. ("Using Pattern matches method: "+Pattern.matches(".bb", str)) ("Using String matches method: "+str.matches(".bb")) So below code works fine for matching input String with a regular expression in Java. Pattern class also contains matches method that takes regex and input String as argument and return boolean result after matching them. Internally it uses Pattern and Matcher java regex classes to do the processing but obviously it reduces the code lines. Since java regular expression revolves around String, String class has been extended in Java 1.4 to provide a matches method that does regex pattern matching. When we run this java regex example program, we get below output.Įxception in thread "main" 圎xception: Dangling meta character '*' near index 0Īt .error(Pattern.java:1924)Īt .sequence(Pattern.java:2090)Īt .expr(Pattern.java:1964)Īt .compile(Pattern.java:1665)Īt .(Pattern.java:1337)Īt .compile(Pattern.java:1022)Īt .main(PatternExample.java:13) ("Input String matches regex - "+matcher.matches()) Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("MxxY") Let’s have a look at Java Regex example program.
