I have a regular expression in php and I need to convert it to java. Is it possible to do so? If yes how can i do?
Thanks in advance
$region_pattern = "/<a href=\"#\"><img src=\"images\/ponto_[^\.]+\.gif\"[^>]*>[ ]*<strong>(?P<neighborhood>[^\(<]+)\((?P<region>[^\)]+)\)<\/strong><\/a>/i" ;
A typical conversion from any regex to java is to:
/i. You should either put it in the initialisation of your Pattern object or prepend it to the regex like (?i)<regex>\ with \\, \ has a meaning already in java(escape in strings), to use a backslash inside a regex in java you have to use \\ instead of \, so \w becomes \\w. and \\ becomes \\\\Above regex would become
Pattern.compile("<a href=\"#\"><img src=\"images\\/ponto_[^\\.]+\\.gif\"[^>]*>[ ]*<strong>(?P<neighborhood>[^\\(<]+)\\((?P<region>[^\\)]+)\\)<\\/strong><\\/a>", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
This will fail however, I think it is because ?P is a modifier, not one I know exists in Java so ye it is a invalid regex.
(?i)regex (mode is on for the rest of the pattern or until turned off with (?-i)) or (?i:regex) (mode is on only within enclosing group). And the ?P is part of the Python-style named-group syntax, which is also valid in PHP but not in Java (but see my answer for an alternative).
There are some problems with the original regex that have to be cleared away first. First, there's [ ], which matches one of the characters &, n, b, s, p or ;. To match an actual non-breaking space character, you should use \xA0.
You also have a lot of unneeded backslashes in there. You can get rid of some by changing the regex delimiter to something other than /; others aren't needed because they're inside character classes, where most metacharacters lose their special meanings. That leaves you with this PHP regex:
"~<a href=\"#\"><img src=\"images/ponto_[^.]+\.gif\"[^>]*>\xA0*<strong>(?P<neighborhood>[^(<]+)\((?P<region>[^)]+)\)</strong></a>~i"
There are three things that make this regex incompatible with Java. One is the delimiters (/ originally, ~ in the version above) along with the trailing i modifier. Java doesn't use regex delimiters at all, so just drop those. The modifier can be moved into the regex itself by using the inline form, (?i), at the beginning of the regex. (That will work in PHP too, by the way.)
Next is the backslashes. The ones that are used to escape quotation marks remain as they are, but all the others get doubled because Java is more strict about escape sequences in string literals.
Finally, there are the named groups. Up until Java 6, named groups weren't supported at all; Java 7 supports them, but they use the shorter (?<name>...) syntax favored by .NET,
not the Pythonesque (?P<name>...) syntax. (By the way, the shorter (?<name>...) version should work in PHP, too (as should (?'name'...), also introduced by .NET).
So the Java 7 version of your regex would be:
"(?i)<a href=\"#\"><img src=\"images/ponto_[^.]+\\.gif\"[^>]*>\\xA0*<strong>(?<neighborhood>[^(<]+)\\((?<region>[^)]+)\\)</strong></a>"
For Java 6 or earlier you would use:
"(?i)<a href=\"#\"><img src=\"images/ponto_[^.]+\\.gif\"[^>]*>\\xA0*<strong>([^(<]+)\\(([^)]+)\\)</strong></a>"
...and you'd have to use numbers instead of names to refer to the group captures.
REGEX is REGEX regardless of language. The REGEX you've posted will work on both Java and PHP. You do need to make some adjustments as both language don't take the pattern exactly the same (though the pattern itself will work in both languages).
Pattern object applies flags without having to specify them on the pattern string itself.
/, flags are applied to the Pattern object, to start off with incompatibilities. The fixing of the escape chars will be most work, since there is also triple and quadruple escaping in java regex flavour. Believe me, any regex that works in Perl or PHP will NOT work in Java after simple copy paste