Groovy Goodness: Using Regular Expression Pattern Class

To define a regular expression pattern in Groovy we can use the tilde (~) operator for a String. The result is a java.util.regex.Pattern object. The rules to define the pattern are the same as when we do it in Java code. We can invoke all standard methods on the Pattern object. For example we can create a Matcher to match values. In a next blog post we see how Groovy has better shortcuts to define a Matcher to find and match values.

def single = ~'[ab]test\\d'
assert 'java.util.regex.Pattern' == single.class.name

def dubble = ~"string\$"
assert dubble instanceof java.util.regex.Pattern

// Groovy's String slashy syntax is very useful to 
// define patterns, because we don't have to escape
// all those backslashes.
def slashy = ~/slashy \d+ value/
assert slashy instanceof java.util.regex.Pattern

// GString adds a negate() method which is mapped
// to the ~ operator.
def negateSlashy = /${'hello'}GString$/.negate()
assert negateSlashy instanceof java.util.regex.Pattern
def s = 'more'
def curlySlashy = ~"$s GString"
assert curlySlashy instanceof java.util.regex.Pattern

// Using Pattern.matcher() to create new java.util.regex.Matcher.
// In a next blog post we learn other ways to create
// Matchers in Groovy.
def testPattern = ~'t..t'
assert testPattern.matcher("test").matches()

// Groovy adds isCase() method to Pattern class.
// Easy for switch and grep statements.
def p = ~/\w+vy/
assert p.isCase('groovy')

switch ('groovy') {
    case ~/java/: assert false; break;
    case ~/gr\w{4}/: assert true; break;
    default: assert false
}

// We can use flags in our expressions. In this sample
// we use the case insensitive flag (?i). 
// And the grep method accepts Patterns.
def lang = ~/^(?i)gr.*/
def languages = ['java', 'Groovy', 'gRails']
assert ['Groovy', 'gRails'] == languages.grep(lang)