Java Regular Expressions: Taming the java.util.regex Engine (Paperback)

~ Mehran Habibi (Author)
Key Phrases: string hello, string buffer, reluctant qualifiers, James Bond, Object Model, Practical Examples (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

<p>Java has always been an excellent language for working with objects. But Java's text manipulation mechanisms have always been limited, compared to languages like AWK and Perl. On the flip side, a new regular expressions package in Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) brings hope to the Java text mechanisms. This package provides you everything necessary to use regular expressions&emdash;all packaged in a simplified object-oriented framework. <p>

In addition to working examples and best practices, this book features a detailed API reference with examples supporting nearly every method, and a step-by-step tutorial to create your own regular expressions. With time, you'll discover that regular expressions are extremely powerful in your programming arsenal&emdash;and you'll enjoy using them! And once you've mastered these tools, you'll ponder how you ever managed without them?

About the Author

Mehran Habibi is the coauthor of <i>The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 1.4</i> and <i>Cracking the AP Computer Science Exam, 2004-2005 Edition</i>. He is also an application architect with BankOne in Ohio, where he resides with his lovely wife, Angela. Mehran has over 9 years of IT experience, including positions with IBM, Executive Jet, UUNET, BankOne, and OCLC, in addition to working as a university lecturer, independent consultant, and Java certification trainer. Technologies of interest to him include web services, wireless technologies, and XML/XSLT. Mehran’s professional focus has been on architecture, project leadership, mentoring, team leadership, and programming from the mid-tier on back. Mehran holds certifications in both "The Other Company" and Java 2, and he graduated with a bachelor’s of science degree in software engineering from the honors program at The Ohio State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (October 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590591070
• ISBN-13: 978-1590591079
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #874,830 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Taming developers for the REGEX adventure, May 4, 2006

By	Ganeshji Marwaha (India) - See all my reviews

Java, with simplicity being the prime motto started off by striking off pointers, generics, multiple inheritance, regex, high-end reflection etc., from the core language. But as time progressed, folks at sun started bringing those features back into the language out of growing necessity. Java 1.2 added a proper Collections API, Java 1.3 added Dynamic Proxy model, Java 1.4 added Regex, Java 1.5 added generics and so on...

Regular Expressions (REGEX) are one of those weirdly named concepts that establishes a back-off-i-am-complex sort of impression at first sight. Admittedly, it has a strong mathematical foundation and a tidy sum of theory backing its existence. But, that doesnt mean that learning and using them in programming languages have to be difficult, in fact it is not even close to difficult as long as we are well guided by trained personnel.

In this book, the author attempts to train us on regular expressions as it applies to java.

Chapter 1 answers questions like "What is a regular expression" and "How to create regular expressions with that weird syntax".
In my opinion, this chapter is a tad quicker than one would like. So, those new to regex might find it a bit intimidating.

Chapter 2 introduces you to the java's regex object model. Specifically the Pattern and Matcher objects are addressed along with the additions to the String class.
At first, i thought that this chapter is nothing but a copy-paste of javadocs. Later, when i referred javadocs for further information i realized that the author truly took the pain to decode it before presenting it here. This chapter is a good reference for the java regex object model.

Chapter 3 explains the advanced concepts like groups, subgroups, back-references, greedy qualifiers, possessive qualifiers, reluctant qualifiers, positive look-aheads, negative look-aheads, positive look-behinds and negative look-behinds. Finally, the author enlightens us with some tips on how to create efficient regular expressions.
In my opinion, this section is too thin. It covers too many concepts in too little pages. I would have expected a more exhaustive coverage here.

Chapter 4 tries to demonstrate practical usage of regular expressions in the context of an object oriented language like java.
This chapter is too ambitious about being practical; and gets too involved with file I/O and NIO than is necessary. Reading this chapter is a waste of time because it neither explains NIO nor REGEX well.

Chapter 5 takes a few of real-life use-cases like Email validation, Phone Number validation etc. and attempts to solve it.
Again, i was hoping that this section will contain interesting information, but was very dissapointed. Many examples were a mere copy-paste from earlier chapters.

Bottomline, if you are looking for a head start in java regex; this book helps. But, if you are looking for an indepth coverage of concepts, the art of writing efficient expressions and are expecting to become a regex expert, then this book alone wont suffice. You might have to try reading this book(for java api) along with "Mastering Regular Expressions" (for regex concepts) to achieve that goal.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Taming what?, July 3, 2005

By	Riccardo Audano (Chiavari, Italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This book starts very well with a practical, easy to follow, step-to-step introduction to regular expressions and their use with Java. This is to be appreciated since regexp are a complex subject that can easily be presented in an intimidating and obscure way. The problem is, this books never soars over this elementary level and in the end leaves you a bit disappointed even if you are totally new to the subject. The book is small and there are lots of white spaces, repetitions and not so useful discussions. I am under the unpleasant impression that the author and publisher realized the book lacked some meat and tried to cover up for it. It can still be a useful text if you want a really gentle intro to regexp usage in Java, but be warned that it lacks a serious and convincing treatment of regexp syntax. You will come out from this book with the ability to use regular expresisons only for really simple cases.
The subtitle should be "a light intro to java.util.regex engine" and not certainly "taming the java.util.regex engine".

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Shame On the Editor, August 4, 2004

By	Randy (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

I am relatively new to Java. Although I have forgotten most of what I once knew about regular expressions, I remember their power quite well. So I was very excited when I saw this book. But here's my unfortunate conclusion: The editing of this book is so sloppy, the typos so frequent and often grossly misleading, that what should have been a pleasure turned out to be a chore. Having said that, I will certainly admit that I got enough information to begin playing around with RE in Java myself. But I doubt I will ever buy another book from this publisher.