Re: simple regex pattern sought

From:
Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sat, 26 May 2012 00:12:34 +0200
Message-ID:
<a2aeesF2s0U1@mid.individual.net>
On 25.05.2012 23:55, Lew wrote:

Roedy Green wrote:

I often have to search for things of the form

"xxxxx"
or
'xxxxx'

where xxx is anything not " or '. It might be Russian or English or
any other language.

What is the cleanest way to do that?


Use a regex like "[\"'][^\"']+[\"']" is one way. The cleanest? I don't know.


That does not match quoting properly. Better do something like

"([\"'])[^\"']*\\1"

Still I prefer

"\"[^\"]*\"|'[^']*'"

Because it allows for quotes of the other type inside quotes.

With proper escaping (using \ as escape char, any other works, too) this
becomes

"\"(?:\\\\.|[^\\\"])*\"|'(?:\\\\.|[^\\'])*'"

Kind regards

    robert

package rx;

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Quotes {

   private static final Pattern Q1 = Pattern.compile("([\"'])[^\"']*\\1");
   private static final Pattern Q2 = Pattern.compile("\"[^\"]*\"|'[^']*'");
   private static final Pattern Q3 =
Pattern.compile("\"(?:\\\\.|[^\\\"])*\"|'(?:\\\\.|[^\\'])*'");

   public static void main(String[] args) {
     System.out.println(Q1);
     for (final Matcher m = Q1.matcher("'a' \"b\" 'c'"); m.find();) {
       System.out.println(m.group());
     }

     System.out.println(Q2);
     for (final Matcher m = Q2.matcher("'a' \"b\" 'c'"); m.find();) {
       System.out.println(m.group());
     }

     System.out.println(Q3);
     for (final Matcher m = Q3.matcher("'a' \"\\\"b\" 'c'"); m.find();) {
       System.out.println(m.group());
     }
   }

}

--
remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end
http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/

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