Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!1.eu.feeder.erje.net!news.swapon.de!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Eric Sosman Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: check if string has non-word characters Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 11:41:46 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <471b79ac-8ba1-40d4-8630-e75a8ca20abe@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 15:40:30 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="858a9d65d95f4ea4d355bd116aa2cdbf"; logging-data="17655"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/djgtpvqgJmUYWA3bjvV2W" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.7.0 In-Reply-To: <471b79ac-8ba1-40d4-8630-e75a8ca20abe@googlegroups.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:RzZ1BHjuspg6QwpE4e1fOuw4rjs= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:31802 On 6/16/2015 10:20 AM, mike wrote: > Hi, > > String is not allowed to contain non-word characters. However it is ok with: > > 1. = in as long it is not in the end or beginning of string. > 2. , as long as it is at the end of the string. Just typed in, untested: Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\w[\\w=]*[\\w,]"); This isn't quite perfect, as it insists on at least two characters (it won't match "x", for instance, though it will match "xx" or "x,"). Also, it matches "x=,", which your description permits but which might not be what you intended. What is the larger problem you're trying to solve? There might be a better way to tackle it than to try to get the whole job done with one super-regex. As an old-line Netscape developer said, Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. -- esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid "Don't be afraid of work. Make work afraid of you." -- TLM