org.apache.oro.text.regex
Interface PatternCompiler

All Known Implementing Classes:

Perl5Compiler

public interface PatternCompiler

Untamed: The PatternCompiler interface defines the operations a regular expression compiler must implement. However, the types of regular expressions recognized by a compiler and the Pattern implementations produced as a result of compilation are not restricted.

A PatternCompiler instance is used to compile the string representation (either as a String or char[]) of a regular expression into a Pattern instance. The Pattern can then be used in conjunction with the appropriate PatternMatcher instance to perform pattern searches. A form of use might be:

 PatternCompiler compiler;
 PatternMatcher matcher;
 Pattern pattern;
 String input;

 // Initialization of compiler, matcher, and input omitted;

 try {
   pattern = compiler.compile("\\d+");
 } catch(MalformedPatternException e) {
   System.out.println("Bad pattern.");
   System.out.println(e.getMessage());
   System.exit(1);
 }


 if(matcher.matches(input, pattern))
    System.out.println(input + " is a number");
 else
    System.out.println(input + " is not a number");

 

Specific PatternCompiler implementations such as Perl5Compiler may have variations of the compile() methods that take extra options affecting the compilation of a pattern. However, the PatternCompiler method implementations should provide the default behavior of the class.

Version:

$Id: PatternCompiler.java,v 1.4 2001/12/02 06:01:40 markm Exp $

Author:

Daniel F. Savarese

See Also:

Pattern, PatternMatcher, MalformedPatternException

Method Summary

Pattern	compile(char[] pattern) Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.
Pattern	compile(char[] pattern, int options) Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.
Pattern	compile(String pattern) Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.
Pattern	compile(String pattern, int options) Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.

Method Detail

compile

public Pattern compile(String pattern)
                throws MalformedPatternException

Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.

Parameters:

pattern - A regular expression to compile.

Returns:

A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.

MalformedPatternException

compile

public Pattern compile(String pattern,
                       int options)
                throws MalformedPatternException

Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching. Additional regular expression syntax specific options can be passed as a bitmask of options.

Parameters:

pattern - A regular expression to compile.

options - A set of flags giving the compiler instructions on how to treat the regular expression. The flags are a logical OR of any number of the allowable constants permitted by the PatternCompiler implementation.

Returns:

A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.

MalformedPatternException

compile

public Pattern compile(char[] pattern)
                throws MalformedPatternException

Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.

Parameters:

pattern - A regular expression to compile.

Returns:

A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.

MalformedPatternException

compile

public Pattern compile(char[] pattern,
                       int options)
                throws MalformedPatternException

Enabled: Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching. Additional regular expression syntax specific options can be passed as a bitmask of options.

Parameters:

pattern - A regular expression to compile.

options - A set of flags giving the compiler instructions on how to treat the regular expression. The flags are a logical OR of any number of the allowable constants permitted by the PatternCompiler implementation.

Returns:

A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.

MalformedPatternException