ORO, Inc. Logo  All Packages  Class Hierarchy  This Package  Previous  Next  Index

Interface com.oroinc.text.regex.PatternCompiler

public interface PatternCompiler
The PatternCompiler interface defines the operations a regular expression compiler must implement. However, the types of regular expressions recognized by a compiler and the Pattern implementations produced as a result of compilation are not restricted.

A PatternCompiler instance is used to compile the string representation (either as a String or char[]) of a regular expression into a Pattern instance. The Pattern can then be used in conjunction with the appropriate PatternMatcher instance to perform pattern searches. A form of use might be:

 PatternCompiler compiler;
 PatternMatcher matcher;
 Pattern pattern;
 String input;
 // Initialization of compiler, matcher, and input omitted;
 try {
   pattern = compiler.compile("\\d+");
 } catch(MalformedPatternException e) {
   System.out.println("Bad pattern.");
   System.out.println(e.getMessage());
   System.exit(1);
 }
 if(matcher.matches(input, pattern))
    System.out.println(input + " is a number");
 else
    System.out.println(input + " is not a number");
 

Specific PatternCompiler implementations such as Perl5Compiler may have variations of the compile() methods that take extra options affecting the compilation of a pattern. However, the PatternCompiler method implementations should provide the default behavior of the class.

Copyright © 1997 Original Resuable Objects, Inc. All rights reserved.

Author:
Daniel F. Savarese
See Also:
Pattern, PatternMatcher, MalformedPatternException

Method Index

 o compile(char[])
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.
 o compile(char[], int)
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.
 o compile(String)
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.
 o compile(String, int)
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.

Methods

 o compile
 public abstract Pattern compile(String pattern) throws MalformedPatternException
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.

Parameters:
pattern - A regular expression to compile.
Returns:
A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.
Throws: MalformedPatternException
If the compiled expression does not conform to the grammar understood by the PatternCompiler or if some other error in the expression is encountered.
 o compile
 public abstract Pattern compile(String pattern,
                                 int options) throws MalformedPatternException
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching. Additional regular expression syntax specific options can be passed as a bitmask of options.

Parameters:
pattern - A regular expression to compile.
options - A set of flags giving the compiler instructions on how to treat the regular expression. The flags are a logical OR of any number of the allowable constants permitted by the PatternCompiler implementation.
Returns:
A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.
Throws: MalformedPatternException
If the compiled expression does not conform to the grammar understood by the PatternCompiler or if some other error in the expression is encountered.
 o compile
 public abstract Pattern compile(char pattern[]) throws MalformedPatternException
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching.

Parameters:
pattern - A regular expression to compile.
Returns:
A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.
Throws: MalformedPatternException
If the compiled expression does not conform to the grammar understood by the PatternCompiler or if some other error in the expression is encountered.
 o compile
 public abstract Pattern compile(char pattern[],
                                 int options) throws MalformedPatternException
Compiles a regular expression into a data structure that can be used by a PatternMatcher implementation to perform pattern matching. Additional regular expression syntax specific options can be passed as a bitmask of options.

Parameters:
pattern - A regular expression to compile.
options - A set of flags giving the compiler instructions on how to treat the regular expression. The flags are a logical OR of any number of the allowable constants permitted by the PatternCompiler implementation.
Returns:
A Pattern instance constituting the compiled regular expression.
Throws: MalformedPatternException
If the compiled expression does not conform to the grammar understood by the PatternCompiler or if some other error in the expression is encountered.

ORO, Inc. Logo  All Packages  Class Hierarchy  This Package  Previous  Next  Index