java regular expression

Question

I'm looking for a reg expression which has the exact same meaning as the "*" operator in a linux / windows command line. For example, find all files that: starts with 0 or more random chars, contains "abc" in the middle, and ends with 0 or more random chars.

So something like this in Java:

if (test.match("*abc*"))
    System.out.println("found match");

Seth Robertson · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-23 20:16:00Z

5

Original answer:

.*abc.*

Is the regexp which solves your problem. Note that if you want to match newline as part of your test string, you might need to enable single-line mode.

Revised answer if you are really talking about files:

[^/]*abc[^/]*

is a better answer since globs do not actually match directories in "*". For example, /etc/*bar will match /etc/foobar but will not match /etc/foo/bar. However, you said you were not interested in filenames, so the difference may be irrelevant to you.

edited May 23, 2011 at 20:16

answered May 23, 2011 at 19:57

Seth Robertson

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2 Comments

user85116 Over a year ago

That was basically what I came up with too, except that I used the brackets like Vivien mentioned; thought I'd ask here to make sure I was doing it right :)

Seth Robertson Over a year ago

@user85116: Answer revised to discuss globs not matching directories, though you may not care.

Vivien Barousse · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-23 19:57:18Z

2

* in Unix is expressed as (.*) in regular expressions.

if (test.match("(.*)abc(.*)")) { /* ... */ }

answered May 23, 2011 at 19:57

Vivien Barousse

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3 Comments

Adam Over a year ago

The parentheses are optional. They signify making it a matching group, which may or may not be wanted.

user85116 Over a year ago

Adam, can you explain your comment a little more?

Seth Robertson Over a year ago

Anything in parens captures the contents, so you can in java find out exactly what the prefix and suffix of abc is.

Andrew · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-23 19:59:07Z

1

Sounds like you want to 'glob' more than a full regex. Check this page out http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/find.html

answered May 23, 2011 at 19:59

Andrew

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1 Comment

user85116 Over a year ago

Thanks Andrew; I just used the file concept to explain what I wanted out of the * I'm not actually looking for files :)

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