regex.pattern need help understanding

[fishy8158]

I am trying to learn how to use the match functions, and i have trouble understanding the following code.

htmltag=pattern.compile(<a\\b[^>]*href=\"[^>]*>(.*?)</a>)

I have read the java artical about patterns but i still don't understand the code line,

From what i understand, its trying to compile( "<a\" X," href=\" X (oneormoretimes) X (any letters , one or more times) </a>)
Can anyone explain the X?

[DarrylBurke]

The backslash is an escape character for String literals, and also an escape character for regexes. So the "\\b" in the String literal is parsed to "\b" in the String variable and interpreted as such be the regex compilation: as a word boundary character.

Here are a couple of good learning resources:
Regular-Expressions.info - Regex Tutorial, Examples and Reference - Regexp Patterns
Lesson: Regular Expressions (The Java™ Tutorials > Essential Classes)

And you missed the quotes around the String literal, and using code tags to post code.

db

[DarrylBurke]

What you refer to as "X" is a character class. You can read up on it in either (or both) of the resources linked.

Also note that ^ within a character class is negation.

db

[fishy8158]

Thanks for the links, ill look into it.