Regular Expression Creator

[Arvind Varma Kalidindi]

Hello,
I know that there is this java.util.regex package which can be
used for doing patten matching on text. But is there a java
program/application which will generate a regular expression for a
given string? In other words, if I give "Gabriel" as the input, it
should say that the regular expression will be ^[A-Z]+[a-zA-Z]*$ .
(Notice the "G" in Gabriel).
Can somebody give me some pointers towards building such an
application (if one doesn't exist)?

Regards,
Arvind.

 

[Murray]

Hello,
I know that there is this java.util.regex package which can be
used for doing patten matching on text. But is there a java
program/application which will generate a regular expression for a
given string? In other words, if I give "Gabriel" as the input, it
should say that the regular expression will be ^[A-Z]+[a-zA-Z]*$ .
(Notice the "G" in Gabriel).
Can somebody give me some pointers towards building such an
application (if one doesn't exist)?

Regards,
Arvind.

Wouldn't the number of valid regular expressions be potentially huge for any
given string?

 

[Frank Buss]

I know that there is this java.util.regex package which can be
used for doing patten matching on text. But is there a java
program/application which will generate a regular expression for a
given string?

System.out.println(".*")

 

[Michael Borgwardt]

I know that there is this java.util.regex package which can be
used for doing patten matching on text. But is there a java
program/application which will generate a regular expression for a
given string?

[]
Wouldn't the number of valid regular expressions be potentially huge for any
given string?

Infinite, actually. And that also holds for any given *set* of Strings.

 

[bugbear]

Hello,
I know that there is this java.util.regex package which can be
used for doing patten matching on text. But is there a java
program/application which will generate a regular expression for a
given string? In other words, if I give "Gabriel" as the input, it
should say that the regular expression will be ^[A-Z]+[a-zA-Z]*$ .
(Notice the "G" in Gabriel).
Can somebody give me some pointers towards building such an
application (if one doesn't exist)?

String generateRegex(String target) {
return "^" + target + "$";
}

This solution doesn't escape any regex special
characters in target, which is left as an excercise.

HTH.

BugBear