I have to validate a set of strings and do stuff with it. The acceptable formats are :
1/2
12/1/3
1/23/333/4
The code used for validation is:
if (str.matches("(\\d+\\/|\\d+){2,4}")) {
// do some stuff
} else {
// do other stuff
}
But it will match any integer with or without slashes, I want to exclude ones without slashes.. How can I match only the valid patterns?
It looks like you want to find number (series of one or more digits - \d+) with one or more /number after it. If that is the case then you can write your regex as
\\d+(/\\d+)+
You can try
(\d+/){1,3}\d+
digits followed by / one to three times----^^^^^^ ^^------followed by digit
Sample code:
System.out.println("1/23/333/4".matches("(\\d+/){1,3}\\d+")); // true
System.out.println("1/2".matches("(\\d+/){1,3}\\d+")); // true
System.out.println("12/1/3".matches("(\\d+/){1,3}\\d+")); // true
Pattern explanation:
( group and capture to \1 (between 1 and 3 times):
\d+ digits (0-9) (1 or more times)
/ '/'
){1,3} end of \1
\d+ digits (0-9) (1 or more times )
\\b\\d+(/\\d+){1, 3}\\b
\b is a word boundary. This will match all tokens with 1-3 slashes, with the slashes surrounded by digits and the token surrounded by word boundaries.
