How to reset the pattern of a regular expression in Java



Problem Description

How to reset the pattern of a regular expression?

Solution

Following example demonstrates how to reset the pattern of a regular expression by using Pattern.compile() of Pattern class and m.find() method of Matcher class.

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Resetting {
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
      Matcher m = Pattern.compile("[frb][aiu][gx]").matcher("fix the rug with bags");
      while (m.find())System.out.println(m.group());
      m.reset("fix the rig with rags");
      while (m.find())System.out.println(m.group());
   }
} 

Result

The above code sample will produce the following result.

fix
rug
bag
fix
rig 
rag

The following is another sample example to reset the pattern of a regular expression

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Matc {
   public static void main(String args[]) {
      Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\d");
      Matcher mat1 = p.matcher("9652018244");
      
      while (mat1.find()) {
         System.out.println("\t\t" + mat1.group());
      } 
      mat1.reset();
      System.out.println("After done resetting the Matcher, it should be like this");
      
      while (mat1.find()) {
         System.out.println("\t\t" + mat1.group());
      }
   }
}

Result

The above code sample will produce the following result.

		9
		6
		5
		2
		0
		1
		8
		2
		4
		4
After done resetting the Matcher, it should be like this
		9
		6
		5
		2
		0
		1
		8
		2
		4
		4
java_regular_exp.htm
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