Regex in java and ignoring white spaces

Question

I want to write a regex to match on a string and ignore white spaces. For example, a search for 'foobar' would match on 'foo bar'.

NullUserException · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-28 01:46:57Z

4

You can strip the spaces in both the pattern and search strings and use indexOf() if that's acceptable (might be a problem if you don't have enough memory to do so).

I don't think a regex would be a good idea, but you could basically make a pattern like:

/f\s*o\s*o\s*b\s*a\s*r/

Which basically has optional whitespaces in between every character.

answered Sep 28, 2010 at 1:46

NullUserException

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6 Comments

casablanca Over a year ago

Stripping spaces is the way to go. Don't even suggest the regex as an option just because the OP asked for it. :)

NullUserException Over a year ago

@casablanca I said "I don't think a regex would be a good idea," the OP can use it at their own peril ;)

NullPointer0x00 Over a year ago

stripping the white spaces is perfect. Thanks!

JoshD Over a year ago

Maybe "I don't think a regex would be a good idea" should have been in bold... and blinking. :)

NullUserException Over a year ago

@Josh It isn't terrible either, because you won't have to create a new string in memory. Java's String.replace() uses regex anyways.

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