Mastering Regular Expressions (2nd Edition) [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 8. Java

Java didn't come with a regex package until Java 1.4, so early programmers had to
do without regular expressions. Over time, many programmers independently
developed Java regex packages of varying degrees of quality, functionality, and
complexity. With the early-2002 release of Java 1.4, Sun entered the fray with their
java.util.regex package. In preparing this chapter, I looked at Sun's package,
and a few others (detailed starting in see Section 8.2.2). So which one is best? As you'll soon see, there can be many ways to judge that.

In This Chapter Before looking at what's in this chapter, it's important to mention
what's not in this chapter. In short, this chapter doesn't restate everything from
Chapters 1 through 6. I understand that some readers interested only in Java may
be inclined to start their reading with this chapter, and I want to encourage them
not to miss the benefits of the preface and the earlier chapters: Chapters 1, 2,
and 3 introduce basic concepts, features, and techniques involved with regular
expressions, while Chapters 4, 5, and 6 offer important keys to regex understanding
that directly apply to every Java regex package that I know of.

As for this chapter, it has several distinct parts. The first part, consisting of "Judging
a Regex Package" and "Object Models," looks abstractly at some concepts that help
you to understand an unfamiliar package more quickly, and to help judge its suitability
for your needs. The second part, "Packages, Packages, Packages," moves
away from the abstract to say a few words about the specific packages I looked at
while researching this book. Finally, we get to the real fun, as the third part talks
in specifics about two of the packages, Sun's java.util.regex and Jakarta's ORO
package.