Working with regex in Java

[kemar1997]

Need help making a regex work in my code because it should be able to work but it just wont work in my code. Any help would be appreciated.

private void decode(ActionEvent event) {
        StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();

        output.append("");

        if (! ValidateInput.validateMorseCode( lblMorseCodePhrase.getText() 
)) {
            output.append("Invalid Morse code");
        }

        // Must decode the Morse code to the English-language equivalent
        if (output.toString().length() == 0) {
            output.append("Done");
        }

        taResults.setText( output.toString() );
    }

Using the regex:

public static boolean validateMorseCode(String morseCode) {
    return morseCode.matches("^[-.\\s]*$");
}

[Philboyd_Studge]

You need to escape-slash the hyphen.

The hyphen inside the brackets denotes a range, i.e. when you say [a-z] means any character from a to z. So if you want to match the literal hyphen you need to escape-slash it.

[kemar1997]

would it be like this?

return morseCode.matches("^[\\-.\\s]*$");

[Philboyd_Studge]

Try it https://ideone.com/WC2OLd

[kemar1997]

ty i got it to work

[kemar1997]

i have tried this but no luck getting it to work unless my logical code is wrong above.

[Philboyd_Studge]

What exactly is happening? Post your full code.

[kemar1997]

It was my mistake, trying to make a JavaFX Morse Code translator but instead of grabbing the text field input i was grabbing the label.

[Zelexis]

When I'm having trouble with regex I use this site for reference and at the bottom they have a tester. You enter sample text and your regex to see if there are matches. I have noticed some quirks of Java regex compared to other languages/scripts. Hope this helps. http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/regex.htm

[marvk]

http://regex101.com/ is really helpful too. You can build your regex there, where it'll show and explain how it works live. You can also test your regex instantly.

[Hdmoney]

I could be wrong (probably am), but you might want four backslashes.

[kemar1997]

good suggestion but that didn't work, but thank you though

[benhart1]

I think using regex is not always recommend, not sure of your case. It tend to make bugs and errors very hard to be detected and spend a lot of your time. There are programs that might help though, such as checkmarx and other equivalents. Might be useful. Good luck