A regular expression is a special sequence of characters that helps you match or find other strings or sets of strings, using a specialized syntax held in a pattern. They can be used to search, edit, or manipulate text and data. Java provides the java.util.regex package for pattern matching with regular expressions.
Matcher class
A Matcher object is the engine that interprets the pattern and performs match operations against an input string. Like the Pattern class, Matcher defines no public constructors. You obtain a Matcher object by invoking the matcher() method on a Pattern object.
The Instances of this class are not safe for use by multiple concurrent threads.
Example
Following Java program accepts 5 strings from the user and prints the strings starting with a digit.
import java.util.Scanner; import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class StartingwithDigit { public static void main( String args[] ) { String regex = "^[0-9].*$"; Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in); System.out.println("Enter 5 input strings: "); String input[] = new String[5]; for (int i=0; i<5; i++) { input[i] = sc.nextLine(); } //Creating a Pattern object Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex); System.out.println("Strings starting with digits: "); for(int i=0; i<5;i++) { //Creating a Matcher object Matcher m = p.matcher(input[i]); if(m.matches()) { System.out.println(m.group()); } } } }
Output
Enter 5 input strings: sample string 1 sample string 2 11 sample string 3 22 sample string 4 43534 56353 636 Strings starting with digits: 11 sample string 3 22 sample string 4 43534 56353 636