Home/ Questions/Q 7906487
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-03T10:59:41+00:00

I have a working regex in Python and I am trying to convert to

  • 0

I have a working regex in Python and I am trying to convert to Java. It seems that there is a subtle difference in the implementations.

The RegEx is trying to match another reg ex. The RegEx in question is:

/(\\.|[^[/\\\n]|\[(\\.|[^\]\\\n])*])+/([gim]+\b|\B)

One of the strings that it is having problems on is: /\s+/;

The reg ex is not supposed to be matching the ending ;. In Python the RegEx works correctly (and does not match the ending ;, but in Java it does include the ;.

The Question(s):

  1. What can I do to get this RegEx working in Java?
  2. Based on what I read here there should be no difference for this RegEx. Is there somewhere a list of differences between the RegEx implementations in Python vs Java?
Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Java doesn’t parse Regular Expressions in the same way as Python for a small set of cases. In this particular case the nested [‘s were causing problems. In Python you don’t need to escape any nested [ but you do need to do that in Java.

    The original RegEx (for Python):

    /(\\.|[^[/\\\n]|\[(\\.|[^\]\\\n])*])+/([gim]+\b|\B)

    The fixed RegEx (for Java and Python):

    /(\\.|[^\[/\\\n]|\[(\\.|[^\]\\\n])*\])+/([gim]+\b|\B)
    • 0