The first parameter of the Pattern.compile() method is the pattern. It describes what is being searched for.
Brackets are used to find a range of characters:
| Expression | Description |
|---|---|
| [abc] | Find one character from the options between the brackets |
| [^abc] | Find one character NOT between the brackets |
| [0-9] | Find one character from the range 0 to 9 |
Metacharacters
Metacharacters are characters with a special meaning:
| Metacharacter | Description |
|---|---|
| | | Find a match for any one of the patterns separated by | as in: cat|dog|fish |
| . | Find just one instance of any character |
| ^ | Finds a match as the beginning of a string as in: ^Hello |
| $ | Finds a match at the end of the string as in: World$ |
| \d | Find a digit |
| \s | Find a whitespace character |
| \b | Find a match at the beginning of a word like this: \bWORD, or at the end of a word like this: WORD\b |
| \uxxxx | Find the Unicode character specified by the hexadecimal number xxxx |
Quantifiers
Quantifiers define quantities:
| Quantifier | Description |
|---|---|
| n+ | Matches any string that contains at least one n |
| n* | Matches any string that contains zero or more occurrences of n |
| n? | Matches any string that contains zero or one occurrences of n |
| n{x} | Matches any string that contains a sequence of X n's |
| n{x,y} | Matches any string that contains a sequence of X to Y n's |
| n{x,} | Matches any string that contains a sequence of at least X n's |
Note: If your expression needs to search for one of the special characters you can use a backslash ( \ ) to escape them. In Java, backslashes in strings need to be escaped themselves, so two backslashes are needed to escape special characters. For example, to search for one or more question marks you can use the following expression: "\\?"
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