10 Java Regular Expression Examples You Should Know
Regular expression is an art of the programing, it’s hard to debug , learn and understand, but the powerful features are still attract many developers to code regular expression. Let’s explore the following 10 practical regular expression ~ enjoy
1. Username Regular Expression Pattern
^[a-z0-9_-]{3,15}$
^ # Start of the line [a-z0-9_-] # Match characters and symbols in the list, a-z, 0-9 , underscore , hyphen {3,15} # Length at least 3 characters and maximum length of 15 $ # End of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
2. Password Regular Expression Pattern
((?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[@#$%]).{6,20})
( # Start of group (?=.*\d) # must contains one digit from 0-9 (?=.*[a-z]) # must contains one lowercase characters (?=.*[A-Z]) # must contains one uppercase characters (?=.*[@#$%]) # must contains one special symbols in the list "@#$%" . # match anything with previous condition checking {6,20} # length at least 6 characters and maximum of 20 ) # End of group
==> See the explanation and example here
3. Hexadecimal Color Code Regular Expression Pattern
^#([A-Fa-f0-9]{6}|[A-Fa-f0-9]{3})$
^ #start of the line # # must constains a "#" symbols ( # start of group #1 [A-Fa-f0-9]{6} # any strings in the list, with length of 6 | # ..or [A-Fa-f0-9]{3} # any strings in the list, with length of 3 ) # end of group #1 $ #end of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
4. Email Regular Expression Pattern
^[_A-Za-z0-9-]+(\\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+)*@[A-Za-z0-9]+ (\\.[A-Za-z0-9]+)*(\\.[A-Za-z]{2,})$
^ #start of the line [_A-Za-z0-9-]+ # must start with string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) ( # start of group #1 \\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+ # follow by a dot "." and string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) )* # end of group #1, this group is optional (*) @ # must contains a "@" symbol [A-Za-z0-9]+ # follow by string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) ( # start of group #2 - first level TLD checking \\.[A-Za-z0-9]+ # follow by a dot "." and string in the bracket [ ], must contains one or more (+) )* # end of group #2, this group is optional (*) ( # start of group #3 - second level TLD checking \\.[A-Za-z]{2,} # follow by a dot "." and string in the bracket [ ], with minimum length of 2 ) # end of group #3 $ #end of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
5. Image File Extension Regular Expression Pattern
([^\s]+(\.(?i)(jpg|png|gif|bmp))$)
( #Start of the group #1 [^\s]+ # must contains one or more anything (except white space) ( # start of the group #2 \. # follow by a dot "." (?i) # ignore the case sensitive checking ( # start of the group #3 jpg # contains characters "jpg" | # ..or png # contains characters "png" | # ..or gif # contains characters "gif" | # ..or bmp # contains characters "bmp" ) # end of the group #3 ) # end of the group #2 $ # end of the string ) #end of the group #1
==> See the explanation and example here
6. IP Address Regular Expression Pattern
^([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\.([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\. ([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])\\.([01]?\\d\\d?|2[0-4]\\d|25[0-5])$
^ #start of the line ( # start of group #1 [01]?\\d\\d? # Can be one or two digits. If three digits appear, it must start either 0 or 1 # e.g ([0-9], [0-9][0-9],[0-1][0-9][0-9]) | # ...or 2[0-4]\\d # start with 2, follow by 0-4 and end with any digit (2[0-4][0-9]) | # ...or 25[0-5] # start with 2, follow by 5 and end with 0-5 (25[0-5]) ) # end of group #2 \. # follow by a dot "." .... # repeat with 3 time (3x) $ #end of the line
==> See the explanation and example here
7. Time Format Regular Expression Pattern
Time in 12-Hour Format Regular Expression Pattern
(1[012]|[1-9]):[0-5][0-9](\\s)?(?i)(am|pm)
( #start of group #1 1[012] # start with 10, 11, 12 | # or [1-9] # start with 1,2,...9 ) #end of group #1 : # follow by a semi colon (:) [0-5][0-9] # follow by 0..5 and 0..9, which means 00 to 59 (\\s)? # follow by a white space (optional) (?i) # next checking is case insensitive (am|pm) # follow by am or pm
==> See the explanation and example here
Time in 24-Hour Format Regular Expression Pattern
([01]?[0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5][0-9]
( #start of group #1 [01]?[0-9] # start with 0-9,1-9,00-09,10-19 | # or 2[0-3] # start with 20-23 ) #end of group #1 : # follow by a semi colon (:) [0-5][0-9] # follow by 0..5 and 0..9, which means 00 to 59
==> See the explanation and example here
8. Date Format (dd/mm/yyyy) Regular Expression Pattern
(0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])/(0?[1-9]|1[012])/((19|20)\\d\\d)
( #start of group #1 0?[1-9] # 01-09 or 1-9 | # ..or [12][0-9] # 10-19 or 20-29 | # ..or 3[01] # 30, 31 ) #end of group #1 / # follow by a "/" ( # start of group #2 0?[1-9] # 01-09 or 1-9 | # ..or 1[012] # 10,11,12 ) # end of group #2 / # follow by a "/" ( # start of group #3 (19|20)\\d\\d # 19[0-9][0-9] or 20[0-9][0-9] ) # end of group #3
==> See the explanation and example here
9. HTML tag Regular Expression Pattern
<("[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^'">])*>
< #start with opening tag "<" ( # start of group #1 "[^"]*" # only two double quotes are allow - "string" | # ..or '[^']*' # only two single quotes are allow - 'string' | # ..or [^'">] # cant contains one single quotes, double quotes and ">" ) # end of group #1 * # 0 or more > #end with closing tag ">"
==> See the explanation and example here
10. HTML links Regular Expression Pattern
HTML A tag Regular Expression Pattern
(?i)<a([^>]+)>(.+?)</a>
( #start of group #1 ?i # all checking are case insensive ) #end of group #1 <a #start with "<a" ( # start of group #2 [^>]+ # anything except (">"), at least one character ) # end of group #2 > # follow by ">" (.+?) # match anything </a> # end with "</a>
Extract HTML link Regular Expression Pattern
\s*(?i)href\s*=\s*(\"([^"]*\")|'[^']*'|([^'">\s]+));
\s* #can start with whitespace (?i) # all checking are case insensive href # follow by "href" word \s*=\s* # allows spaces on either side of the equal sign, ( # start of group #1 "([^"]*") # only two double quotes are allow - "string" | # ..or '[^']*' # only two single quotes are allow - 'string' | # ..or ([^'">]+) # cant contains one single / double quotes and ">" ) # end of group #1
==> See the explanation and example here
- Java Core Technology - Java RegEx, Java XML, Java I/O, Java Misc
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awesome! great examples and lucid explanation!! Thank you very much!!!
thanks;-)
I am new to java script reg expression
I need a regular expression in Java script from a multiline text box
1. I can have only 4 lines in it.
2. it can have 0-35 any charaters in those lines.
3. Number lines are not manadatory means it can have 0 line but max 4 lines.
any help will be appriciated .
Manish
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Just use the official email regular expression from the W3C:
RFC2822
(?:[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*|”(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21\x23-\x5b\x5d-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])*”)@(?:(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?|\[(?:(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)\.){3}(?:25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?|[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21-\x5a\x53-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])+)\])
wow, thanks for the rfc example
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Well not the one I lost but a nice explanation for email validation regex is at:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/email.html
Nice resume,
Agree with regex for email, I did find a long time ago a “one email-validation-regular-expression to rule them all” but I lost the bookmark and never find it again
it was like 40 lines long (100 character per line aprox) and I remember that was created conforming the RFC where address format is described.
THE regex for e-mail addresses is featured on “Mastering Regular Expressions” (O’Reilly), it’s huge indeed.
@JoshDM, PhiLho
Thanks for your comments and advices, ya i agree you both on email and html are too complex to match with RegEx, i seldom do so in my project as well :p. However , if we understand the RegEx well, it’s quite easy to customize it to suit your need.
Actually this article is published as my collection and work reference, it’s good to know it is helpful to others.
hi mkyong,
keep up the good work
Your website is very useful
i learnt so many new things
thanks very much
regards
Ravi
I always cringe when I see a regex to match e-mails. This one isn’t as broken as some others (too many just reject capital letters!) but it is OK only for the most common cases (what about IP address in the domain part?).
Likewise, except for perfectly known generated output, using REs on HTML is a bad idea, as the rules are complex. I believe you can have a > in the value of an attribute, for example.
That said, the article is excellent, showing concrete usage of REs, and doing an excellent job of breaking them down to help understanding them.
Well done!
[...] 10 Java Regular Expression Examples You Should Know (tags: java development) [...]
e-mails can contain a + character after the initial character.