Character class: range - Java regular expressions

The character classes in Java regular expression is defined using the square brackets "[ ]", this subexpression matches a single character from the specified or, set of possible characters. For example, the regular expression [abc] matches a single character a or, b or, c.

The range variant of the character class allows you to use a range of characters i.e the expression [a-z] matches a single character from the alphabets a to z and the expression [^A-Z] matches a character which is not a capital letter.

Example 1

 Live Demo

import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class RegexExample1 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
      System.out.println("Enter input text: ");
      String input = sc.nextLine();
      String regex = "[a-z]";
      //Creating a pattern object
      Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
      //Matching the compiled pattern in the String
      Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
      int count =0;
      while (matcher.find()) {
         count++;
      }
      System.out.println("Number characters from the range (a-z): "+count);
   }
}

Output

Enter input text:
sample data 5423 #@ %*&
Number characters from the range (a-z): 10

Example 2

 Live Demo

import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class RegexExample3 {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
      System.out.println("Enter input text: ");
      String input = sc.nextLine();
      String regex = "[^A-Z]";
      //Creating a pattern object
      Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
      //Matching the compiled pattern in the String
      Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
      int count =0;
      if (matcher.find()) {
         System.out.println("match occurred");
      } else {
         System.out.println("match not occurred");
      }
   }
}

Output 1

Enter input text:
sample data
match occurred

Output 2

Enter input text:
SAMPLEDATA
match not occurred