CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregexstring
scottlima
scottlima

Reputation: 225

What is an alternative to comparing two string with regex

I want to compare two strings, which has a different delimiter in between.

Example

String s1 = "ZZ E5 - Pirates of carribean";
String s2 = "ZZ E5 : Pirates of carribean";

I want to compare if two strings are equal.

I've tried using regex in Java to solve this, 

        String pattern = "(.*)[:-](.*)";
        // Create a Pattern object
        Pattern r = Pattern.compile(pattern);

        // Now create matcher object.
        Matcher m = r.matcher(s1);
        Matcher m1 = r.matcher(s2);

        if (m1.find()&&m.find()) {
            System.out.println("Found value: " + m.group(1));
            System.out.println("Found value: " + m.group(2));
            System.out.println("Found value: " + m1.group(1));
            System.out.println("Found value: " + m1.group(2));

            System.out.println(m.group(1).contentEquals(m1.group(1)));
            System.out.println(m.group(2).contentEquals(m1.group(2)));
        } else {
            System.out.println("NO MATCH");
        }

Is this a good approach or we can do this in some other efficient way ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3344

Answers (2)

jsmills99
jsmills99

Reputation: 56

You could use String.split() and the regex OR operator (if you know all possible delimiters already) and compare the arrays.

import java.utils.Arrays;

String pattern = "-|:";
if (Arrays.equals(s1.split(pattern), (s2.split(pattern)))) {
    System.out.println("Match");
} else {
    System.out.println("No match");
}

edited to use Arrays.equals

Upvotes: 2

Dani Mesejo
Dani Mesejo

Reputation: 61920

You could convert both strings to a canonical form by choosing one of the delimiters as canonical, for example:

String s1 = "ZZ E5 - Pirates of carribean";
String s2 = "ZZ E5 : Pirates of carribean";

String canonicalS1 = s1.replaceAll("-", ":");
String canonicalS2 = s2.replaceAll("-", ":");

System.out.println(canonicalS1.equals(canonicalS2));

Output

true

Note that this solution expects that the delimiters appear only one time, or for that matter that the delimiters are interchangeable.

Upvotes: 5

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