Question

In the Oracle Pattern documentation there is the description of three different pattern for matching whitespace :

1. \s
2. \p{Space}
3. \p{javaWhitespace}

I’m wondering what are the specificity of each and how to know how to choose the right one.
I’ve just noticed that \p{javaWhitespace} include more space type.

Answer 1

I would rather use the first.

• It is compact
• It is the same notation in many other languages, as well as in theory of regexp
• \p{javaWhitespace} include FILE SEPARATOR, GROUP SEPARATOR,etc… see this. Using it when these are not needed may confuse somebody else.
• In general I would expect another programmer to know what \s is while I’ll expect them to double check what is the exact definition of \p{javaWhitespace}. You don’t want that, as it diminish code clarity and add unnecessary burden during debugging.