Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

Package java.util.regex

Classes for matching character sequences against patterns specified by regular expressions.

See:
          Description

Interface Summary
MatchResult The result of a match operation.
 

Class Summary
Matcher An engine that performs match operations on a character sequence by interpreting a Pattern.
Pattern A compiled representation of a regular expression.
 

Exception Summary
PatternSyntaxException Unchecked exception thrown to indicate a syntax error in a regular-expression pattern.
 

Package java.util.regex Description

Classes for matching character sequences against patterns specified by regular expressions.

An instance of the Pattern class represents a regular expression that is specified in string form in a syntax similar to that used by Perl.

Instances of the Matcher class are used to match character sequences against a given pattern. Input is provided to matchers via the CharSequence interface in order to support matching against characters from a wide variety of input sources.

Unless otherwise noted, passing a null argument to a method in any class or interface in this package will cause a NullPointerException to be thrown.

Related Documentation

An excellent tutorial and overview of regular expressions is Mastering Regular Expressions, Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, O'Reilly and Associates, 1997.

Since:
1.4

Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

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