string matches

[jrthor2]

I have a userid field that I only want to allow "a-zA-Z0-9". We are using jdsk 1.3.1, not 1.4, so we can't use import java.util.regex. How can I accomplish this?

Thanks

[buntine]

Setup an array or comma-delimited list of illegal characters and then search the string for them.

public boolean isValid(String strUser)
{
   String strIllegal = "*,&,%,(,),#,@";
   String [] arrIllegal = strIllegal.split(',');

   for (int i=0; i<arrIllegal.length; i++)
      if (strUser.indexOf(arrIllegal[i]) > -1)
         return false;
   return true;
}

That *should* return true if the string does not contain any of the defined illegal characters.

Regards.

[jrthor2]

Ok, I am able now to use jave.util.regex for this. The below code runs, but it asways comes back as "no match", meaning it didn't evaluate the string properly, because it should have returned true. Could someone help please.

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		
		String test = "ef(123"; //this should fail because of the (, but it always passes, and prints out no match below
		
		Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\w", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
		Matcher m = p.matcher(test);
		if(m.matches()==true){
			System.out.println("match true");
		} else {
			System.out.println("no match");
		}
		
	}

[ray326]

String test = "ef(123"; //this should fail because of the (

I think this assumption is false.

Try Pattern.matches(".+\\w.+","ef(123")

BTW, I recommend anyone learning Java go to http://beanshell.org for a great learning tool.

[jrthor2]

Here is an updated code

String test = "jas&on";
		
		Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\w", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
		Matcher m = p.matcher(test);
		if(m.matches()==false){
			System.out.println("invalid string");
		} else {
			System.out.println("valid string");
		}
		
	}

For this example, I get "invalid string".

If I replace "jas&on" with "jason", I still get "invalid string"???

[Jeff Mott]

Is there something wrong with Java's Regex?

e.g.,

boolean bad = Pattern.matches("\\W", "jason");
if (bad)
	System.out.println("Invalid");
else
	System.out.println("Valid");

and

boolean bad = Pattern.matches("\\W", "!j@a#s$o%n^");
if (bad)
	System.out.println("Invalid");
else
	System.out.println("Valid");

Both say Valid. The second absolutely should not.

[ray326]

Well all regex implementations are not created equal but I'm not sure whether this is absolutely wrong. It certainly doesn't match the same way the Javascript or VisualREGEXP regex do.

[HaganeNoKokoro]

Having given the documentation a quick read, it seems that the matches(String regex, String input) method returns true if and only if the entire string matches the pattern. In otherwords, for the regex in your example to return true, every character would have to be a non-word character. Since that's not true in either case, bad is always set to false. The find() method of the matcher returns true if there is an occurrence of the pattern in the string:

Pattern p=Pattern.compile("\\W");
boolean bad=p.matcher("jason").find(); //false
System.out.println(bad);
bad=p.matcher("jason$$").find(); //true
System.out.println(bad);

[Jeff Mott]

Good catch HaganeNoKokoro.

[ray326]

Originally posted by HaganeNoKokoro
Having given the documentation a quick read, it seems that the matches(String regex, String input) method returns true if and only if the entire string matches the pattern. In otherwords, for the regex in your example to return true, every character would have to be a non-word character. Since that's not true in either case, bad is always set to false. The find() method of the matcher returns true if there is an occurrence of the pattern in the string:

Pattern p=Pattern.compile("\\W");
boolean bad=p.matcher("jason").find(); //false
System.out.println(bad);
bad=p.matcher("jason$$").find(); //true
System.out.println(bad);

Hence the reason for the pattern I used in my reply above. Still this is a good illustration that there is not really a "standard" for regex matchers even though the patterns look very very similar.