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Java Lect 17

Regular expressions (RegEx) are patterns used to match sets of strings and are useful for text editing, programming, and data processing. RegEx use normal characters and metacharacters that have special meanings like $, ^, ., \, [], (), +, ?. Common uses of RegEx include searching, search and replace, and text processing in tools like text editors, programming languages, and grep/awk utilities.

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Chander Kumar
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© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
84 views

Java Lect 17

Regular expressions (RegEx) are patterns used to match sets of strings and are useful for text editing, programming, and data processing. RegEx use normal characters and metacharacters that have special meanings like $, ^, ., \, [], (), +, ?. Common uses of RegEx include searching, search and replace, and text processing in tools like text editors, programming languages, and grep/awk utilities.

Uploaded by

Chander Kumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Regular Expressions

Where can I use


Powerful in
- Search , search and replace, text processing

Text Editors vi, editplus


Programming languages - perl, Java
Grep,awk

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Before RegEx
Wildcard
*.txt
My_report*.doc
Here the * indicates any number of any
characters.

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!
Regular expressions (RegEx) tend to
be easier to write than they are to
read

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What is RegEx
a regular expression-- a pattern that describes or
matches a set of strings
Matched text chunk of text which matches the
regular expression.
ca[trn]
Matches car, can, cat

Editplus is used throughout this presentation as tool to demonstrate


regular expressions

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the

Structure of RegEx
Made up of normal characters and
metacharacters.
Metacharacters special function
$ ^ . \ [] \( \) + ?
$ means end of line
^ start of line

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Literal match
RegEx: cat will match the word cat
It will also match words like
concatenation , delicate, located,
modification
It is not desired sometimes ?
solution

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Matching
Match the space before and after
cat
cat
? Still problem

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Character class
Want to search in or on ..
So searching RegEx : [io]n will match in
and on both
[ ] : used to specify a set of character to
select from.
[a-h] : indicates set of all characters from a to
h
[4-9A-T]

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Character class
It can also contain individual
characters as : [acV5y0]
[0-9] : ?
[0-9][0-9] :?
18[0-9][0-9]:?

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Example
set of vowels
[aeiou]

set of consonents

[bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz]

Consider matching words which start with 2


vowels and end with consonant
[aeiou][aeiou][bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz] ?
[aeiou][aeiou][bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz]

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Negation
The absence of any character or set
of character can be shown using ^
symbol

[^ab^8] : means not a , but b , but not 8


[^c-p] : means any character other than
c..p
[^t]ion : select all words ending with
ion but with not before it

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Start/End of line
^ : indicates start of line
$ : indicates end of line
Example:
search lines starting with I
Use RegEx : ^I
search lines ending ending with is
Use RegEx : is$

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match
. : Any character match
e.e : match all strings where first letter is e and
last is e.
Try e.e

If you want only words to be searched then


change the query to
e[a-z]e

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Repeated match
* : match the previous character or
character-class zero or more times
be* : will match sequence of zero or
more e preceded by b
+ : similar to *
Only difference is that it matches
sequence of one or more.

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Selecting a number
Single digit : [0-9]
When single digit is repeated zero or
more times it is a number.
(digit)repeat
[0-9]*
$[0-9]* : ?
\$[0-9]*

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Selecting a word

Word is composed of alphabets


A word is : [a-z]*
A word in all capital letters : ??
A word starting with capital letter :[
][ ]*

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Alternate match
| : symbol is used to specify
alternate match
Search: (above)|(below)

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Search
Day Words
[a-z]*day
[a-z]+day
- [A-Z][a-z]+day

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Escaping Special meaning


How to match (, ) or *
To match the characters which are
used as Metacharacter, \ is added
before them as an escape character.
i.e. to match ( write \( and to match
period . write \.

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Search patterns
has, have, had
not, nt

((have)|(had)|(has))
(( )|(n't)|( not ))*
((have)|(had)|(has))(( )|(n't)|( not ))*

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References
Editplus help pages
http://gnosis.cx/publish/programming/regular_exp
ressions.html
OReilly - Mastering Regular Expressions
Google regular expression tutorial

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Thank you !

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