I am not able to dissect the regular expression

[Swapna latha]

I have got a regular expression in my code which checks for special characters. But i could not able to dissect it how its working ?

^[^:>#*]+|([^:>#*][^>#*]+[^:>#*])$


Thanks in advance

swapna

[Kj Reddy]

Check the below tutorial, should help you to understand:
http://www.vogella.com/articles/JavaRegularExpressions/article.html

[Jelle Klap]

The API documentation of the Pattern (<-click) class can help you with that.

[fred rosenberger]

Just like any programming task, try and break it down into smaller parts that you can understand. Also, tell us where exactly you get lost. Surely some parts of it make sense...

[Campbell Ritchie]

There are far better tutorials available than that one. The Java Tutorials section, for example.

[Swapna latha]

Thanks to all. I will follow the tutorials and come back with the answers and doubts

thanks in advance

swapna

[Campbell Ritchie]

You’re welcome

That regex seems to have repeated elements. If you work out what the repeating element in square brackets means, you are a long way towards solving the whole problem.

[Swapna latha]

I have learned the basics of regular expression. Thanks to all. I got one problem with my regex.

String targetPage="PrestigeCollectionEurope.jsp";
  String pattern1 = Pattern.compile(".*[0-9].*").toString();
  String pattern2 = Pattern.compile(".*[$!*&+,:;=?@#%'()^|-].*").toString();
If(targetPage.matches(pattern1) || targetPage.matches(pattern2))
response.sendRedirect("/register.jsp");

My regex is written in such a way that it should not allow alpha numeric, and special characters. Thats fine, but its failing in one scenario for targetPage and that is Prestige$%$lll.jsp. How to make sure that it should work.
I am getting the following error:

: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException
	at com.ibm.wsspi.webcontainer.util.RequestUtils.parseName(RequestUtils.java:275)
	at com.ibm.wsspi.webcontainer.util.RequestUtils.parseQueryString(RequestUtils.java:152)
	at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.srt.SRTServletRequest.parseQueryStringList(SRTServletRequest.java:2072)
	at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.srt.SRTServletRequest.parseParameters(SRTServletRequest.java:2048)

thanks in advance

swapna

[Winston Gutkowski]

Swapna latha wrote:My regex is written in such a way that it should not allow alpha numeric, and special characters. Thats fine, but its failing in one scenario for targetPage and that is Prestige$%$lll.jsp. How to make sure that it should work.

Fairly obviously, by making sure that it 'understands' the "%nn" syntax.

My suggestion: write a little program that does this using ONLY standard String methods, and then translate it to a regex. You may find that your program is actually faster than a regex; and for something complicated like this, it's highly likely to be more readable too.

Winston