Question

I have to create a regular expression for some path conversion.
Example for path are

//name:value /name:value // name:value
/name:value /name:value
/name:value//name:value

thing is how to check for // or / at the start or middle of the string and how can i specify that name can contain any of this a-zA-Z and _

Path also contains white spaces.

Answer 1

This should help:

String s = "//name:value /name:value // name:value";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("//?\\s*(\\w+):(\\w+)\\s*");
Matcher m = p.matcher(s);
while (m.find()) {
  System.out.printf("%s = '%s'%n", m.group(1), m.group(2));
}

Some notes:

• It is assumed the / or // can delineate name:value pairs;
• Optional white space after / or // and after name:value is ignored;
• Both name and value are captured. You don’t say what you want to capture. Adjust the parentheses as necessary;
• Both name and value consist of A-Z, a-z, 0-9 or _ (that’s what \w means).

If you don’t want to find the values but simply test for the validity as a whole:

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