Question

I’m trying to write a regex for:

1. Strings of characters beginning and ending with a double quote character, that do not contain control characters, and for which the backslash is used to escape the next character.
2. The paren-star form of comments in Pascal: strings beginning with (* and ending with *) that do not contain *)

I’m trying to write a version in Ruby, then another in Java, but I’m having trouble finding the differences in regex expressions for both. Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Here is a good place to start:

• specifics for Java (mostly usage of regex in general)
• specifics for Ruby (mostly usage of regex in general)
• flavor comparison (mostly regex syntax and features)

Mostly note that in Ruby your write regexes by delimiting them with /, and in Java you need to double-escape everything (\\ instead of \) so that the backslashes get through to the regex engine. Everything else you should find within those links I gave you above.

For the sake of completeness of this answer, I would also like to include Tom’s Link to this online regex tester, that supports a multitude of regex flavors.

You should go ahead and give both regexes a go. If you encounter any problems, you are more than welcome to ask a new (specific) question, showing your own attempts.