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Regular Expressions
Introduction
Test Harness
String Literals
Character Classes
Predefined Character Classes
Quantifiers
Capturing Groups
Boundary Matchers
Methods of the Pattern Class
Methods of the Matcher Class
Methods of the PatternSyntaxException Class
Unicode Support
Additional Resources
Questions and Exercises
Trail: Essential Classes
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# Lesson: Regular Expressions

This lesson explains how to use the ``java.util.regex`` API for pattern matching with regular expressions. Although the syntax accepted by this package is similar to the Perl programming language, knowledge of Perl is not a prerequisite. This lesson starts with the basics, and gradually builds to cover more advanced techniques.

Introduction
  Provides a general overview of regular expressions. It also introduces the core classes that comprise this API.
Test Harness
  Defines a simple application for testing pattern matching with regular expressions.
String Literals
  Introduces basic pattern matching, metacharacters, and quoting.
Character Classes
  Describes simple character classes, negation, ranges, unions, intersections, and subtraction.
Predefined Character Classes
  Describes the basic predefined character classes for whitespace, word, and digit characters.
Quantifiers
  Explains greedy, reluctant, and possessive quantifiers for matching a specified expression x number of times.
Capturing Groups
  Explains how to treat multiple characters as a single unit.
Boundary Matchers
  Describes line, word, and input boundaries.
Methods of the Pattern Class
  Examines other useful methods of the `Pattern` class, and explores advanced features such as compiling with flags and using embedded flag expressions.
Methods of the Matcher Class
  Describes the commonly-used methods of the `Matcher` class.
Methods of the PatternSyntaxException Class
  Describes how to examine a `PatternSyntaxException`.
Additional Resources
  To read more about regular expressions, consult this section for additional resources.

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