Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

Package java.util.regex

Classes for matching character sequences against patterns specified by regular expressions.

See:
          Description

Interface Summary
MatchResult The result of a match operation.
 

Class Summary
Matcher An engine that performs match operations on a character sequence by interpreting a Pattern.
Pattern A compiled representation of a regular expression.
 

Exception Summary
PatternSyntaxException Unchecked exception thrown to indicate a syntax error in a regular-expression pattern.
 

Package java.util.regex Description

Classes for matching character sequences against patterns specified by regular expressions.

An instance of the Pattern class represents a regular expression that is specified in string form in a syntax similar to that used by Perl.

Instances of the Matcher class are used to match character sequences against a given pattern. Input is provided to matchers via the CharSequence interface in order to support matching against characters from a wide variety of input sources.

Unless otherwise noted, passing a null argument to a method in any class or interface in this package will cause a NullPointerException to be thrown.

Related Documentation

An excellent tutorial and overview of regular expressions is Mastering Regular Expressions, Jeffrey E. F. Friedl, O'Reilly and Associates, 1997.

Since:
1.4

Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

Submit a bug or feature
For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

Copyright © 1993, 2015, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.

Scripting on this page tracks web page traffic, but does not change the content in any way.