【The Java™ Tutorials】【Regular Expressions】10. Methods of the Matcher Class

Index Methods

• public int start(): Returns the start index of the previous match.
• public int start(int group): Returns the start index of the subsequence captured by the given group during the previous match operation.
• public int end(): Returns the offset after the last character matched.
• public int end(int group): Returns the offset after the last character of the subsequence captured by the given group during the previous match operation.

Study Methods

• public boolean lookingAt(): Attempts to match the input sequence, starting at the beginning of the region, against the pattern.
• public boolean find(): Attempts to find the next subsequence of the input sequence that matches the pattern.
• public boolean find(int start): Resets this matcher and then attempts to find the next subsequence of the input sequence that matches the pattern, starting at the specified index.
• public boolean matches(): Attempts to match the entire region against the pattern. （matches要求整个字符串都匹配，而lookingAt不需要）

Replacement Methods

• public String replaceAll(String replacement): Replaces every subsequence of the input sequence that matches the pattern with the given replacement string.
• public String replaceFirst(String replacement): Replaces the first subsequence of the input sequence that matches the pattern with the given replacement string.
• public Matcher appendReplacement(StringBuffer sb, String replacement): Implements a non-terminal append-and-replace step.
• public StringBuffer appendTail(StringBuffer sb): Implements a terminal append-and-replace step.