THE Java™ Programming Language, Fourth Edition

Creates a matcher that will match the given input against this pattern.

public String[]split(CharSequence input, int limit)

A convenience method that splits the given input sequence around matches of

this pattern. Useful when you do not need to reuse the matcher.

public String[]split(CharSequence input)

A convenience method that splits the given input sequence around matches of

this pattern. Equivalent to split(input,0).

public static booleanmatches(String regex, CharSequence input)

A convenience method that compiles the given regular expression and

attempts to match the given input against it. Useful when you do not need to

reuse either parser or matcher. Returns true if a match is found.

public static Stringquote(String str)

Returns a string that can be used to create a pattern that would match with

str.

The toString method of a Pattern also returns the regular expression from which the pattern was
compiled.

The flags you can specify when creating the pattern object affect how the matching will be done. Some of
these affect the performance of the matching, occasionally severely, but they may be functionality you need.

Flag Meaning

CASE_INSENSITIVE Case-insensitive matching. By default, only handle case for the ASCII characters.

UNICODE_CASE Unicode-aware case folding when combined with CASE_INSENSITIVE

CANON_EQ Canonical equivalence. If a character has multiple expressions, treat them as

equivalent. For example, å is canonically equivalent to a\u030A.

DOTALL Dot-all mode, where. matches line breaks, which it otherwise does not.

MULTILINE Multiline mode, where ^ and $ match at lines embedded in the sequence, not just

at the start end of the entire sequence

UNIX_LINES Unix lines mode, where only \n is considered a line terminator.

COMMENTS Comments and whitespace in pattern. Whitespace will be ignored, and comments

starting with # are ignored up to the next end of line.

LITERAL Enable literal parsing of the pattern

The Matcher class has methods to match against the sequence. Each of these returns a boolean indicating
success or failure. If successful, the position and other state associated with the match can then be retrieved
from the Matcher object via the start, end, and group methods. The matching queries are

public booleanmatches()