| symbol defines an 'or' operation - Java Regular Expressions

Java examples for Regular Expressions:Pattern

  1. HOME
  2. Java
  3. Regular Expressions
  4. Pattern

Introduction

It lets you create patterns that accept any of two or more variations.

For example, here's an improvement to the pattern for validating droid names.

| character indicates that either the group on the left or the group on the right can be used to match the string.

The group on the left matches a word character, a digit, a hyphen, a word character, and another digit.

The group on the right matches a word character, a hyphen, a digit, and two word characters.

Demo Code

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

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(\\w\\d-\\w\\d)|(\\w-\\d\\w\\w)");
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher("r2-d2");
    if (matcher.matches())
      System.out.println("Match.");
    else/*from  ww  w . j  a v a  2 s  .co  m*/
      System.out.println("Does not match.");
  }

}

Related Tutorials