strings - Regular Expressions - Basics

In Java, \\ means "I'm inserting a regular expression backslash, so the following character has special meaning." To insert a literal backslash, we say \\\.

// strings/IntegerMatch.java
// (c)2017 MindView LLC: see Copyright.txt
// We make no guarantees that this code is fit for any purpose.
// Visit http://OnJava8.com for more book information.

public class IntegerMatch {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("-1234".matches("-?\\d+"));
    System.out.println("5678".matches("-?\\d+"));
    System.out.println("+911".matches("-?\\d+"));
    System.out.println("+911".matches("(-|\\+)?\\d+"));
  }
}
/* Output:
true
true
false
true
*/

// strings/Splitting.java
// (c)2017 MindView LLC: see Copyright.txt
// We make no guarantees that this code is fit for any purpose.
// Visit http://OnJava8.com for more book information.

import java.util.*;

public class Splitting {
  public static String knights =
      "Then, when you have found the shrubbery, "
          + "you must cut down the mightiest tree in the "
          + "forest...with... a herring!";

  public static void split(String regex) {
    System.out.println(Arrays.toString(knights.split(regex)));
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    split(" "); // Doesn't have to contain regex chars
    split("\\W+"); // Non-word characters
    split("n\\W+"); // 'n' followed by non-words
  }
}
/* Output:
[Then,, when, you, have, found, the, shrubbery,, you, must, cut, down, the, mightiest, tree, in, the, forest...with..., a, herring!]
[Then, when, you, have, found, the, shrubbery, you, must, cut, down, the, mightiest, tree, in, the, forest, with, a, herring]
[The, whe, you have found the shrubbery, you must cut dow, the mightiest tree i, the forest...with... a herring!]
*/

With regular expression replacement, we can either replace the first occurrence, or all of them:

// strings/Replacing.java
// (c)2017 MindView LLC: see Copyright.txt
// We make no guarantees that this code is fit for any purpose.
// Visit http://OnJava8.com for more book information.

public class Replacing {
  static String s = Splitting.knights;

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(s.replaceFirst("f\\w+", "located"));
    System.out.println(s.replaceAll("shrubbery|tree|herring", "banana"));
    System.out.println("forest...".matches("f\\w+"));
    System.out.println("forest".matches("f\\w+"));
  }
}
/* My Output:
Then, when you have located the shrubbery, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest...with... a herring!
Then, when you have found the banana, you must cut down the mightiest banana in the forest...with... a banana!
false
true
*/

POSIX	Non-standard	Perl/Tcl	Vim	Java	ASCII	Description
	[:ascii:][29]			\p{ASCII}	[\x00-\x7F]	ASCII characters
[:alnum:]				\p{Alnum}	[A-Za-z0-9]	Alphanumeric characters
	[:word:][29]	\w	\w	\w	[A-Za-z0-9_]	Alphanumeric characters plus "_"
		\W	\W	\W	[^A-Za-z0-9_]	Non-word characters
[:alpha:]			\a	\p{Alpha}	[A-Za-z]	Alphabetic characters
[:blank:]			\s	\p{Blank}	[ \t]	Space and tab
		\b	\< \>	\b	(?<=\W)(?=\w)|(?<=\w)(?=\W)	Word boundaries
				\B	(?<=\W)(?=\W)|(?<=\w)(?=\w)	Non-word boundaries
[:cntrl:]				\p{Cntrl}	[\x00-\x1F\x7F]	Control characters
[:digit:]		\d	\d	\p{Digit} or \d	[0-9]	Digits
		\D	\D	\D	[^0-9]	Non-digits
[:graph:]				\p{Graph}	[\x21-\x7E]	Visible characters
[:lower:]			\l	\p{Lower}	[a-z]	Lowercase letters
[:print:]			\p	\p{Print}	[\x20-\x7E]	Visible characters and the space character
[:punct:]				\p{Punct}	[][!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{|}~-]	Punctuation characters
[:space:]		\s	\_s	\p{Space} or \s	[ \t\r\n\v\f]	Whitespace characters
		\S	\S	\S	[^ \t\r\n\v\f]	Non-whitespace characters
[:upper:]			\u	\p{Upper}	[A-Z]	Uppercase letters
[:xdigit:]			\x	\p{XDigit}	[A-Fa-f0-9]	Hexadecimal digits

references:

1. On Java 8 - Bruce Eckel

2. https://github.com/wangbingfeng/OnJava8-Examples/blob/master/strings/IntegerMatch.java

3. https://github.com/wangbingfeng/OnJava8-Examples/blob/master/strings/Splitting.java

4.https://github.com/wangbingfeng/OnJava8-Examples/blob/master/strings/Replacing.java

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression