Java All-in-One For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 3

Using Regular Expressions

In This Chapter

Introducing regular expressions

Trying out regular expressions with a helpful program

Creating simple expressions that match patterns of characters

Using regular expression features such as custom classes, quantifiers, and groups

Using regular expressions with the String class

Using the Pattern and Matcher classes for more-extensive regular expressions

Regular expressions are not expressions that have a lot of fiber in their diet. Instead, a regular expression is a special type of pattern-matching string that can be very useful for programs that do string manipulation. Regular expression strings contain special pattern-matching characters that can be matched against another string to see whether the other string fits the pattern. Regular expressions are very handy for doing complex data validation — for making sure that users enter ...