regular expression

[QkrspCmptPop]

In java regular expression, is it possible to reference one previous part of this pattern, or is it possible to make the comparison of two parts of a pattern.

For example, here is the Days Starttime-Endtime pattern
^(M?T?W?R?F?S?U?\\s(([01]\\d|2[0-3])[0-5]\\d\\-([01]\\d|2[0-3])[0-5]\\d))$

here is a valid office hours:
MWF 0800-1000

here should be an invalid office hours:
MWF 1100-1000
Because endtime should be after start time.

The real question is:
can we implement start time before end time through pattern?

Thanks.

[Eranga]

I don't think with a RegEx this is possible, may be in a complex manner. Why don't you do simple string manipulation, separate the start-end times and process.

[QkrspCmptPop]

Yep. Seems that one possible solution is to get the capturing groups with matcher.group, then doing the comparison between 2 groups and throw the exception

[Lil_Aziz1]

Sorry dude, but like Eranga said, I don't think it's possible. I looked over some conditional, lookahead, lookbehind and there's nothing that would check if a backreference is greater than another backreference

[JosAH]

Sorry dude, but like Eranga said, I don't think it's possible. I looked over some conditional, lookahead, lookbehind and there's nothing that would check if a backreference is greater than another backreference

Indeed, regular expressions can't do any numerical calculations; e.g. see the mess how to specify a number in the range [0,23]. REs can recognize regular patterns in Strings. But on top of those REs there's Java that can do the non-regular condition checks.

kind regards,

Jos

[Lil_Aziz1]

yea it does look like a mess, but regex's (in my opinion) autonomy is just prodigious. It doesn't rely on a programming language. It's like an interface and is implemented by many languages. Regex is probably one of the things that I love about programming in general.

[r035198x]

yea it does look like a mess, but regex's (in my opinion) autonomy is just prodigious. It doesn't rely on a programming language. It's like an interface and is implemented by many languages. Regex is probably one of the things that I love about programming in general.

Try to understand its limitations though. Days have been wasted at trying to devise a regex for a non regular language. The pumping lemma thinks regex is for kids.

[JosAH]

Try to understand its limitations though. Days have been wasted at trying to devise a regex for a non regular language. The pumping lemma thinks regex is for kids.

Note that this baby pumping lemma can decide whether or not a language is regular; if so a regular expression can be crafted to recognize this (baby) language. A textual representation for two numbers n1 and n2 where n2 > n1 definitely is not regular.

kind regards,

Jos

[Eranga]

Note that this baby pumping lemma can decide whether or not a language is regular; if so a regular expression can be crafted to recognize this (baby) language. A textual representation for two numbers n1 and n2 where n2 > n1 definitely is not regular.

I've seen that most the time people try to solve such complex validations using RegEx. In my experience they feel that RegEx more powerful to do any kind of validations, in string manipulations.