Question

I am using this pattern and matching a string.

String s = "//name:value /name:value";
if (s.matches("(//?\\s*\\w+:\\w+\\s*)+")) {
  // it fits
}

This works properly.
But if I want to have a string like "/name-or-address:value/name-or-address:value" which has this ‘-‘ in second part, it doesn’t work.
I am using \w to match A-Za-z_, but how can I include - in that?

Answer 1

Use [\w-] to combine both \w and -.

Note that - should always be at the beginning or end of a character class, otherwise it will be interpreted as defining a range of characters (for instance, [a-z] is the range of characters from a to z, whereas [az-] is the three characters a,z,and-).