Module regex
ballerina/regex Ballerina library
Overview
This module provides APIs for searching, splitting, and replacing the set of characters of a string. These APIs are using a
regular expression as a String to perform these operations by finding the string matches.
Regular expressions, are notations for describing sets of character strings. If a particular string is in the set described by a regular expression, the regular expression matches that string.
For information on the operations, which you can perform with the regex module, see the below Functions.
Functions
matches
Checks whether the given string matches the provided regex.
boolean isMatched = regex:matches("Ballerina is great", "Ba[a-z ]+");
Parameters
- stringToMatch string - The string to match the regex
- regex string - The regex to match the string
Return Type
- boolean -
trueif the provided string matches the regex or elsefalse
replaceAll
Replaces each occurrence of the substrings, which match the provided regex from the given original string value with the provided replacement string.
string result = regex:replaceAll("Ballerina is great", "\\s+", "_");
Parameters
- originalString string - The original string to replace the occurrences of the substrings that match the provided regex
- regex string - The regex to match the substrings in the
originalString, which is to be replaced
- replacement string - The replacement string to replace the substrings, which match the regex
Return Type
- string - The resultant string with the replaced substrings
replaceFirst
Replaces the first substring that matches the given regex with the provided replacement string.
string result = regex:replaceFirst("Ballerina is great", "\\s+", "_");
Parameters
- originalString string - The original string to replace the first occurrence of the substring that matches the provided regex
- regex string - The regex to match the first substring in the
originalStringto be replaced
- replacement string - The replacement string to replace the first substring, which matches the regex
Return Type
- string - The resultant string with the replaced substring
split
Returns an array of strings by splitting a string using the provided regex as the delimiter.
string[] result = regex:split("Ballerina is great", " ");
Parameters
- receiver string - The string to split
- delimiter string - The delimiter is a regex, which splits the given string
Return Type
- string[] - An array of strings containing the individual strings that are split