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Because I've been asked a few times already for sample regular expressions, I thought it might be helpful to post some of the most common regular expressions that are used in programming. I haven't tested any of these yet with Java, but I think most will work off the shelf, or at least with minor tweaks.
An interesting note is that there are several ways to write the same regular expression, and I intentionally tried to stress that in the examples below.
| Regular Expression |
What it Matches |
^$ |
A blank line. |
[A-Z][A-Z] |
Two character state abbreviation.
Note that you may choose to put spaces either before or after the regex. |
.*, [A-Z][A-Z] |
City, State abbreviation. |
[0-9]\{5\}(-[0-9]\{4\})? |
Zip Code.
Five digits, followed by an optional hyphen and four additional digits. |
[0-9]\{3\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{4\} |
Social security number, such as:
###-##-#### |
\$[0-9]*.[0-9][0-9] |
Dollar amounts, specified with a leading $ symbol. |
[0-9]\{4\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{2\} |
Date, in numeric format, such as 2003-08-06. |
[A-Z][a-z][a-z] [0-9][0-9]*, [0-9]\{4\} |
Date, in format such as "Jan 3, 2003" |
I'll add more regular expressions as I think of them, but these are some of the
first that come to mind. I'm sure that other common regular expressions can
easily be extrapolated from these.
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