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Thread: Regular Expression Difficulties...

  1. #1
    Member snowguy13's Avatar
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    Default Regular Expression Difficulties...

    Hi everyone!

    Right now I'm working on a regular expression that searches for comparison operators (">", "<=", "!=", etc.).

    Here's the regex I've come up with:

    private static final String C = "[\\Q><!\\E]?\\=?"; //comparator regex

    It looks for a ">", "<", or "!" once or not at all, followed by a "=" once or not at all. The "\\Q" starts a quote (because "<", ">", and "!" are reserved characters for regular expressions, I need to escape to use them) that is ended by the "\\E". The "\\" in front of the "=" is again an escape, because "=" is also a reserved regex character. All of these have two "\" because the compiler throws an illegal escape character otherwise; the first "\" lets it know that the second "\" should be taken literally.

    So, I whipped that up, thought it would work, and was sorely disappointed...

    I tested it using this simple code:
    public static void main(String[] teehee) {
      String s = "> < >= <= = !=";
      Matcher m;
      for(String part : s.split(" ")) {
        m = Pattern.compile(C).matcher(part); //C being the regex I described above
        System.out.print("\'" + part + "\': ");
        if(m.find()) {
          System.out.println("Valid!");
        } else {
          System.out.println("Invalid...");
        }
      }
    }

    Fortunately, when I ran that test, this was the result:
    '>': Valid!
    '<': Valid!
    '>=': Valid!
    '<=': Valid!
    '=': Valid!
    '!=': Valid!

    Unforunately, this regex gets so carried away that it accepts almost anything...
    Changing the value of 's' to ">as fqq<f >fq= <f=Q =D !s=", this results:

    '>as': Valid!
    'fqq<f': Valid!
    '>fq=': Valid!
    '<f=Q': Valid!
    '=D': Valid!
    '!s=': Valid!

    ...what have I done wrong? I'd appreciate any help!
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    Administrator copeg's Avatar
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    Default Re: Regular Expression Difficulties...

    Try adding some boundary matchers in there...word boundaries, or as the below shows, beginning and ending of the line

    ^[\\Q><!\\E]?\\=?$

    Note the regex will also match an empty String (none of either)

  3. The Following User Says Thank You to copeg For This Useful Post:

    snowguy13 (July 3rd, 2012)

  4. #3
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    Default Re: Regular Expression Difficulties...

    Oh, alright! That makes perfect sense! All of those other wrong inputs did match, because they contained the characters I asked for. Never did I realize my assumption that the Matcher would only start at the beginning... Thanks very much!!

    If I'm planning on putting this regex within other regex's (odd plural...), should I remove the "^" and "$"?
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    Default Re: Regular Expression Difficulties...

    Here is a link the java tutorial on regular expressions: Lesson: Regular Expressions (The Java™ Tutorials > Essential Classes)

    On another note, I read regex's as regular expressions to avoid the problem entirely, although oddly enough I read regex as it is spelt.

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    snowguy13 (July 4th, 2012)

  7. #5
    Member snowguy13's Avatar
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    Default Re: Regular Expression Difficulties...

    Thanks for the link; but I've already been reading that extensively.

    I do the same with the pronunciation. Regex is so much easier to say than regular expression, though I sound awfully lazy saying that...
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