Doubt in Parsing(Regex)

[Dash Abhisek]

pattern("aaaaa");--->5 a's
matcher("a*");
while(find())
system.out.println(start()) produces....

0
1
2
3
4
5---->///now, iam understanding why it's printing uptill 4 but why its printing "5"?
please explain...

[Marilyn de Queiroz]

Originally posted by Dash Abhisek:
sorry the pattern for the question that i posted earlier is "a?"

please explain

[Dash Abhisek]

Thanks for your reply but if you could explain it right here then it would be really helpful

[Mark Vedder]

I'd be happy to lend a hand (as I am sure others would be), but could you please post your complete code snippet rather than pseudo code. As posted right now, it looks like the code is using some method pattern() that takes a string. There is no such method in the Java API anywhere. So I have no idea what the code is doing there. And I can only assume the find() method and start() methods in the code are the find() method from the Matcher class... but that's a big assumption.

Please see the FAQ tip PostRealCode for more info.

[Rob Spoor]

After the "aaaaa" string there is one substring left: the empty string. This matches a* (zero or more a's) too.

[Alan Moore]

This thread is much more confusing than it needs to be. Dash's pseudocode implies that he's matching the regex "aaaaa" against the target string "a*", which is backward. Then we learn from the the quoted text in Marilyn's reply (quoted from where, I wonder? - edit: never mind, it came from here) that the regex is really "a?", which is good, because "a*" is inconsistent with the output. Dash, this is why you should post your real code whenever possible, as Mark suggested.

Anyway, Rob's answer is still essentially correct despite the changed regex. Here's a complete demonstration:

import java.util.regex.*;
 
public class Test
{
  public static void main(String... args) throws Exception
  {
    Pattern p = Pattern.compile("a?");
    Matcher m = p.matcher("aaaaa");
    
    while (m.find())
    {
      System.out.printf("%d,%d%n", m.start(), m.end());
    }
  }
}

output:

0,1
1,2
2,3
3,4
4,5
5,5

As you can see, each match starts where the previous one ended. Since the regex can match zero characters, it matches the empty string starting at index 5.
[ July 20, 2008: Message edited by: Alan Moore ]

[Dash Abhisek]

Thanks Alan for demonstrating the answer but In the String I have given five a so the first a is at position 0 and the fifth a is position at 4th position then how come 5th index is there ?

[Campbell Ritchie]

Please read the replies, particularly Rob Prime's which explains it simply.

[Piet Verdriet]

Originally posted by Dash Abhisek:
Thanks Alan for demonstrating the answer but In the String I have given five a so the first a is at position 0 and the fifth a is position at 4th position then how come 5th index is there ?

The regex "a?" in combination with the string "aaaaa" will match on the following places:

[a]aaaa    // the first 'a'
a[a]aaa    // the second 'a'
aa[a]aa    // ...
aaa[a]a    // ...
aaaa[a]    // ...
aaaaa[]    // !!! the empty String after the last 'a'

[Dash Abhisek]

Thanks to Everybody who gave Reply

My doubt is cleared