why java doesnt allow "\" ?

[naved momin]

in java

"\n"//is legal 

where as

regex:   \d{10} // is illegal why ?

[Roberto Perillo]

The backslash is a special character. A character preceeded by a "\" is a escape sequence. Please take a look here for more information.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Roberto Perillo wrote:The backslash is a special character. A character preceeded by a "\" is a escape sequence.

Actually, the problem is that backslash is a special character for both Strings and regexes, and each define their own escape sequences.

\d{10} is certainly a valid regex, but the trouble is that regexes are also Strings, and \d is NOT a valid escape sequence for a String.

Therefore, you have to double up the \ so that the regex processor gets to see it, viz:
String regex = "\\d{10}";

Personally, I think they would have saved an awful lot of bother by choosing a different escape character for Strings.

Winston

[Jeff Verdegan]

Winston Gutkowski wrote:

Roberto Perillo wrote:The backslash is a special character. A character preceeded by a "\" is a escape sequence.

Actually, the problem is that backslash is a special character for both Strings and regexes, and each define their own escape sequences.

\d{10} is certainly a valid regex, but the trouble is that regexes are also Strings, and \d is NOT a valid escape sequence for a String.

Therefore, you have to double up the \ so that the regex processor gets to see it, viz:
String regex = "\\d{10}";

Actually, it's a special character in String literals, that is, quoted strings in your source code.

So in the above, the compiler sees "\\" and says, "Oh, the first \ is escaping the second one, so I will create a String with the characters '\', 'd', '{', '1', '0', '}' in it." If we were, say, reading the String from a file, then we could simply put

\d{10}

in the file, and something like

String regex = bufferedReader.readLine();

and end up with the same results--that is, in both cases, the String contains the characters:
\d{10}

[Matthew Brown]

Winston Gutkowski wrote:Personally, I think they would have saved an awful lot of bother by choosing a different escape character for Strings.

I quite like the C# feature of being able to prefix string literals with @ to disable escaping - it comes in very handy for regular expressions and Windows file paths. E.g.:
String regex = @"\d{10}";

[Winston Gutkowski]

Jeff Verdegan wrote:Actually, it's a special character in String literals...

Yes. Quite right.

Winston

[Jeff Verdegan]

Matthew Brown wrote:

Winston Gutkowski wrote:Personally, I think they would have saved an awful lot of bother by choosing a different escape character for Strings.

I quite like the C# feature of being able to prefix string literals with @ to disable escaping - it comes in very handy for regular expressions and Windows file paths. E.g.:
String regex = @"\d{10}";

That is handy, and, IMHO, a better solution than picking some other escape character (which could then end up needing to be double escaped in some other context).

[Winston Gutkowski]

Matthew Brown wrote:I quite like the C# feature of being able to prefix string literals with @ to disable escaping - it comes in very handy for regular expressions and Windows file paths.

Indeed. I wonder why they haven't included it? Perhaps there's an aversion to accepting anything from Microsoft.

Winston

[Bear Bibeault]

Because outside of Windows file paths, \ is rarely used.

[Jeff Verdegan]

Bear Bibeault wrote:Because outside of Windows file paths, \ is rarely used.

Hmm... It seems to me there's some other context in which we regularly need that character to express something, but I just can't remember what it is...

[Jesper de Jong]

The meaning of \ as an escape character in string literals is something that Java has inherited from C and C++.