Regular Expression for Monthyyyy string match

Hi,

If the input to below program is Jan2011 or January2011 or abc2011, it validates. I want that only full months should succeed. For e.g., Jan2011 is invalid and January2011 is valid.

- Constraint here is I can use only Scanner and findInline methods.

Could you please help in creating a correct regex?

Thanks.

Get rid of the [...] brackets. They have a special meaning in a regular expression, and they aren't doing what you need here. Replace them with (...).

You should also remove the +, as you only want the month to appear once (e.g. you don't want "JanuaryMarch2011" to validate).

Finally, although it's not necessary, your outer (...) aren't doing anything useful, so you might as well remove them.

Matthew Brown wrote:Get rid of the [...] brackets. They have a special meaning in a regular expression, and they aren't doing what you need here. Replace them with (...).

You should also remove the +, as you only want the month to appear once (e.g. you don't want "JanuaryMarch2011" to validate).

Finally, although it's not necessary, your outer (...) aren't doing anything useful, so you might as well remove them.

Thanks for the useful reply...

Here, one more issue comes when I use the below mentioned regex:
s.findInLine("^(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\\d{4}$");

for (int i=1; i<=result.groupCount(); i++)
System.out.println(result.group(i));

Output of above snippet is January, since small brackets are ended before the year \\d{4} regex..but I need the whole string to come as a group.. Other possible solution is to use result.group(). this returns January2011 but I can't use it as my code is generic to other regex patterns also and I am using result.group(i) and not result.group().

Please let me know, if you require more inputs. Would appreciate if you can help in resolving this as well.

What does group(0) return?

Wouter Oet wrote:What does group(0) return?

Yes it returns January2011, the one what I want. It is same as result.group(). But, I am using the loop starting from 1 till the max size. The code is generic and is used for other pattern matching also. So, for this particular pattern, can't change starting from 0.
We need the one starting from 1 and the only option left is to change in regex and not in code.

Please advise.
Thanks.

You can make the choice a non-capturing group by starting it with (?: instead of just (. Then put the entire thing in a capturing group:
Now you will only have one group, which is the entire String.

Gaurav Kr. Arora wrote:We need the one starting from 1 and the only option left is to change in regex and not in code.

Ah, that's what the extra brackets were doing, then. You can put them back - though Rob's is a better solution in terms of optimising it.

Rob Spoor wrote:You can make the choice a non-capturing group by starting it with (?: instead of just (. Then put the entire thing in a capturing group:
"^((?:January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December)\\d{4})$"Now you will only have one group, which is the entire String.

Got it Rob!! This is what I like the most about Code Ranch! People here dedicate their time to help others!!
Thanks a ton Rob and all of you who contributed to this post!!