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Java Regex X{n,m} X, at least n but not more than m times

I am trying to understand how to match an email address to the following pattern:
myEmail#something.any
The any should be between 2,4 characters.
Please find Java code below. I cannot understand why it returns true. Thanks!
public static void main(String[] args){
String a = "daniel#gmail.com";
String b = "[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+#[a-zA-Z0-9.+-]+.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}";
String c = "MyNameis1#abcx.comfff";
Boolean b1 = c.matches(b);
System.out.println(b1);
}
OUTPUT: true

In regex, . matches any character (except newline). If you want to match . literally, you need to escape it:
[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+#[a-zA-Z0-9.+-]+\\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}
This is better, but it still matches the MyNameis1#abcx.comf portion. We can add an end of string anchor ($) to ensure there are no trailing unmatched characters:
[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+#[a-zA-Z0-9.+-]+\\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$

Escape the . in String b = "[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+#[a-zA-Z0-9.+-]+.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}";. It is a special character in regex.
Use : String b = "[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+#[a-zA-Z0-9.+-]+\\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}";

In your expression dot meant any character. escape that and make sure no character follows post your min/max char checks like below:
[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+#[a-zA-Z0-9.+-]+\\.[a-zA-Z]{2,4}$

Insert character before specific character Java

I have been taking a look at the regular expressions and how to use it in Java for the problem I have to solve. I have to insert a \ before every ". This is what I have:
public class TestExpressions {
public static void main (String args[]) {
String test = "$('a:contains(\"CRUCERO\")')";
test = test.replaceAll("(\")","$1%");
System.out.println(test);
}
}
The ouput is:
$('a:contains("%CRUCERO"%)')
What I want is:
$('a:contains(\"CRUCERO\")')
I have changed % for \\ but have an error StringIndexOutofBounds don't know why. If someone can help me I would appreciate it, thank you in advance.

I have to insert a \ before every "
You can try with replace which automatically escapes all regex metacharacters and doesn't use any special characters in replacement part so you can simply use String literals you want to be put in matched part.
So lets just replace " with \" literal. You can write it as
test = test.replace("\"", "\\\"");

If you want to insert backspace before quote then use:
test = test.replaceAll("(\")","\\\\$1"); // $('a:contains(\"CRUCERO\")')
Or if you want to avoid already escaped quote then use negative lookbehind:
String test = "$('a:contains(\\\"CRUCERO\")')";
test = test.replaceAll("((?<!\\\\)\")","\\\\$1"); // $('a:contains(\"CRUCERO\")')

String result = subject.replaceAll("(?i)\"CRUCERO\"", "\\\"CRUCERO\\\"");
EXPLANATION:
Match the character string “"CRUCERO"” literally (case insensitive) «"CRUCERO"»
Ignore unescaped backslash «\»
Insert the character string “"CRUCERO” literally «"CRUCERO»
Ignore unescaped backslash «\»
Insert the character “"” literally «"»

If your goal is escape text for Java strings, then instead of regular expressions, consider using
String escaped = org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils.
escapeJava("$('a:contains(\"CRUCERO\")')");
System.out.println(escaped);
Output:
$('a:contains(\"CRUCERO\")')
JavaDoc: http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/javadocs/api-2.6/org/apache/commons/lang/StringEscapeUtils.html#escapeJava(java.lang.String)

Why is this Java regex not working?

I'm trying to match any string consisting of:
Any alphanumeric string of 1+ chars; then
Two periods (".."); then
Any alphanumeric string of 1+ chars
For example:
mydatabase..mytable
anotherDatabase23..table28
etc.
Given the following function:
public boolean isValidDBTableName(String candidate) {
if(candidate.matches("[a-zA-Z0-9]+..[a-zA-Z0-9]+"))
return true;
else
return false;
}
Passing this function the value "mydb..tablename" causes it to return false. Why? Thanks in advance!

As NeplatnyUdaj has pointed out in comment, your current regex should return true for the input "mydb..tablename".
However, your regex has the problem of over-matching, where it returns true for invalid names such as nodotname.
You need to escape ., since in Java regex, it will match any character except for line separators:
"[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\.\\.[a-zA-Z0-9]+"
In regex, you can escape meta-characters (character with special meaning) with \. To specify \ in string literal, you need to escape it again.

You must escape the period in regexes. As a \ must also be escaped, this gives
"[a-zA-Z0-9]+\\.\\.[a-zA-Z0-9]+"

I just tried your regex in Eclipse and it worked. Or at least did not fail. Try stripping whitespace characters.
#Test
public void test()
{
String testString = "mydb..tablename";
Assert.assertTrue("no match", testString.matches("[a-zA-Z0-9]+..[a-zA-Z0-9]+"));
Assert.assertFalse("falsematch", "a.b".matches("[a-zA-Z0-9]+..[a-zA-Z0-9]+"));
}

Escaping special characters in Java Regular Expressions

Is there any method in Java or any open source library for escaping (not quoting) a special character (meta-character), in order to use it as a regular expression?
This would be very handy in dynamically building a regular expression, without having to manually escape each individual character.
For example, consider a simple regex like \d+\.\d+ that matches numbers with a decimal point like 1.2, as well as the following code:
String digit = "d";
String point = ".";
String regex1 = "\\d+\\.\\d+";
String regex2 = Pattern.quote(digit + "+" + point + digit + "+");
Pattern numbers1 = Pattern.compile(regex1);
Pattern numbers2 = Pattern.compile(regex2);
System.out.println("Regex 1: " + regex1);
if (numbers1.matcher("1.2").matches()) {
System.out.println("\tMatch");
} else {
System.out.println("\tNo match");
}
System.out.println("Regex 2: " + regex2);
if (numbers2.matcher("1.2").matches()) {
System.out.println("\tMatch");
} else {
System.out.println("\tNo match");
}
Not surprisingly, the output produced by the above code is:
Regex 1: \d+\.\d+
Match
Regex 2: \Qd+.d+\E
No match
That is, regex1 matches 1.2 but regex2 (which is "dynamically" built) does not (instead, it matches the literal string d+.d+).
So, is there a method that would automatically escape each regex meta-character?
If there were, let's say, a static escape() method in java.util.regex.Pattern, the output of
Pattern.escape('.')
would be the string "\.", but
Pattern.escape(',')
should just produce ",", since it is not a meta-character. Similarly,
Pattern.escape('d')
could produce "\d", since 'd' is used to denote digits (although escaping may not make sense in this case, as 'd' could mean literal 'd', which wouldn't be misunderstood by the regex interpeter to be something else, as would be the case with '.').

Is there any method in Java or any open source library for escaping (not quoting) a special character (meta-character), in order to use it as a regular expression?
If you are looking for a way to create constants that you can use in your regex patterns, then just prepending them with "\\" should work but there is no nice Pattern.escape('.') function to help with this.
So if you are trying to match "\\d" (the string \d instead of a decimal character) then you would do:
// this will match on \d as opposed to a decimal character
String matchBackslashD = "\\\\d";
// as opposed to
String matchDecimalDigit = "\\d";
The 4 slashes in the Java string turn into 2 slashes in the regex pattern. 2 backslashes in a regex pattern matches the backslash itself. Prepending any special character with backslash turns it into a normal character instead of a special one.
matchPeriod = "\\.";
matchPlus = "\\+";
matchParens = "\\(\\)";
...
In your post you use the Pattern.quote(string) method. This method wraps your pattern between "\\Q" and "\\E" so you can match a string even if it happens to have a special regex character in it (+, ., \\d, etc.)

I wrote this pattern:
Pattern SPECIAL_REGEX_CHARS = Pattern.compile("[{}()\\[\\].+*?^$\\\\|]");
And use it in this method:
String escapeSpecialRegexChars(String str) {
return SPECIAL_REGEX_CHARS.matcher(str).replaceAll("\\\\$0");
}
Then you can use it like this, for example:
Pattern toSafePattern(String text)
{
return Pattern.compile(".*" + escapeSpecialRegexChars(text) + ".*");
}
We needed to do that because, after escaping, we add some regex expressions. If not, you can simply use \Q and \E:
Pattern toSafePattern(String text)
{
return Pattern.compile(".*\\Q" + text + "\\E.*")
}

The only way the regex matcher knows you are looking for a digit and not the letter d is to escape the letter (\d). To type the regex escape character in java, you need to escape it (so \ becomes \\). So, there's no way around typing double backslashes for special regex chars.

The Pattern.quote(String s) sort of does what you want. However it leaves a little left to be desired; it doesn't actually escape the individual characters, just wraps the string with \Q...\E.
There is not a method that does exactly what you are looking for, but the good news is that it is actually fairly simple to escape all of the special characters in a Java regular expression:
regex.replaceAll("[\\W]", "\\\\$0")
Why does this work? Well, the documentation for Pattern specifically says that its permissible to escape non-alphabetic characters that don't necessarily have to be escaped:
It is an error to use a backslash prior to any alphabetic character that does not denote an escaped construct; these are reserved for future extensions to the regular-expression language. A backslash may be used prior to a non-alphabetic character regardless of whether that character is part of an unescaped construct.
For example, ; is not a special character in a regular expression. However, if you escape it, Pattern will still interpret \; as ;. Here are a few more examples:
> becomes \> which is equivalent to >
[ becomes \[ which is the escaped form of [
8 is still 8.
\) becomes \\\) which is the escaped forms of \ and ( concatenated.
Note: The key is is the definition of "non-alphabetic", which in the documentation really means "non-word" characters, or characters outside the character set [a-zA-Z_0-9].

Use this Utility function escapeQuotes() in order to escape strings in between Groups and Sets of a RegualrExpression.
List of Regex Literals to escape <([{\^-=$!|]})?*+.>
public class RegexUtils {
static String escapeChars = "\\.?![]{}()<>*+-=^$|";
public static String escapeQuotes(String str) {
if(str != null && str.length() > 0) {
return str.replaceAll("[\\W]", "\\\\$0"); // \W designates non-word characters
}
return "";
}
}
From the Pattern class the backslash character ('\') serves to introduce escaped constructs. The string literal "\(hello\)" is illegal and leads to a compile-time error; in order to match the string (hello) the string literal "\\(hello\\)" must be used.
Example: String to be matched (hello) and the regex with a group is (\(hello\)). Form here you only need to escape matched string as shown below. Test Regex online
public static void main(String[] args) {
String matched = "(hello)", regexExpGrup = "(" + escapeQuotes(matched) + ")";
System.out.println("Regex : "+ regexExpGrup); // (\(hello\))
}

Agree with Gray, as you may need your pattern to have both litrals (\[, \]) and meta-characters ([, ]). so with some utility you should be able to escape all character first and then you can add meta-characters you want to add on same pattern.

use
pattern.compile("\"");
String s= p.toString()+"yourcontent"+p.toString();
will give result as yourcontent as is

How to remove special characters from a string?

I want to remove special characters like:
- + ^ . : ,
from an String using Java.

That depends on what you define as special characters, but try replaceAll(...):
String result = yourString.replaceAll("[-+.^:,]","");
Note that the ^ character must not be the first one in the list, since you'd then either have to escape it or it would mean "any but these characters".
Another note: the - character needs to be the first or last one on the list, otherwise you'd have to escape it or it would define a range ( e.g. :-, would mean "all characters in the range : to ,).
So, in order to keep consistency and not depend on character positioning, you might want to escape all those characters that have a special meaning in regular expressions (the following list is not complete, so be aware of other characters like (, {, $ etc.):
String result = yourString.replaceAll("[\\-\\+\\.\\^:,]","");
If you want to get rid of all punctuation and symbols, try this regex: \p{P}\p{S} (keep in mind that in Java strings you'd have to escape back slashes: "\\p{P}\\p{S}").
A third way could be something like this, if you can exactly define what should be left in your string:
String result = yourString.replaceAll("[^\\w\\s]","");
This means: replace everything that is not a word character (a-z in any case, 0-9 or _) or whitespace.
Edit: please note that there are a couple of other patterns that might prove helpful. However, I can't explain them all, so have a look at the reference section of regular-expressions.info.
Here's less restrictive alternative to the "define allowed characters" approach, as suggested by Ray:
String result = yourString.replaceAll("[^\\p{L}\\p{Z}]","");
The regex matches everything that is not a letter in any language and not a separator (whitespace, linebreak etc.). Note that you can't use [\P{L}\P{Z}] (upper case P means not having that property), since that would mean "everything that is not a letter or not whitespace", which almost matches everything, since letters are not whitespace and vice versa.
Additional information on Unicode
Some unicode characters seem to cause problems due to different possible ways to encode them (as a single code point or a combination of code points). Please refer to regular-expressions.info for more information.

This will replace all the characters except alphanumeric
replaceAll("[^A-Za-z0-9]","");

As described here
http://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/regex/Pattern.html
Patterns are compiled regular expressions. In many cases, convenience methods such as String.matches, String.replaceAll and String.split will be preferable, but if you need to do a lot of work with the same regular expression, it may be more efficient to compile it once and reuse it. The Pattern class and its companion, Matcher, also offer more functionality than the small amount exposed by String.
public class RegularExpressionTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("String is = "+getOnlyStrings("!&(*^*(^(+one(&(^()(*)(*&^%$##!#$%^&*()("));
System.out.println("Number is = "+getOnlyDigits("&(*^*(^(+91-&*9hi-639-0097(&(^("));
}
public static String getOnlyDigits(String s) {
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[^0-9]");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(s);
String number = matcher.replaceAll("");
return number;
}
public static String getOnlyStrings(String s) {
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[^a-z A-Z]");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(s);
String number = matcher.replaceAll("");
return number;
}
}
Result
String is = one
Number is = 9196390097

Try replaceAll() method of the String class.
BTW here is the method, return type and parameters.
public String replaceAll(String regex,
String replacement)
Example:
String str = "Hello +-^ my + - friends ^ ^^-- ^^^ +!";
str = str.replaceAll("[-+^]*", "");
It should remove all the {'^', '+', '-'} chars that you wanted to remove!

To Remove Special character
String t2 = "!##$%^&*()-';,./?><+abdd";
t2 = t2.replaceAll("\\W+","");
Output will be : abdd.
This works perfectly.

Use the String.replaceAll() method in Java.
replaceAll should be good enough for your problem.

You can remove single char as follows:
String str="+919595354336";
String result = str.replaceAll("\\\\+","");
System.out.println(result);
OUTPUT:
919595354336

If you just want to do a literal replace in java, use Pattern.quote(string) to escape any string to a literal.
myString.replaceAll(Pattern.quote(matchingStr), replacementStr)