Thread: Regular expression handling

Regexes, to me, are a different language entirely, but I think I have the hang of it now. I'm writing a macro to convert a Word doc saved as .txt to a certain format which I can make more use of. I'm merely reading the file, concatenating it into one humongous string with newlines intact, and doing the following with this array:

Entries 1 and 2 are the find/replace regexes, respectively.
Entry 3 determines whether to run the replaceFirst(1,2) or replaceAll(1,2) method. This saved time originally, but now the two marked with * are taking up to 40 seconds to run, compared with <10 ms for the others.

String[][] regexes = {
        {"\t+","","a"},
        {"<.*?>\n*","\n","a"},
        {"(?i)half ?time","","a"},
        {"\n([0-9]{1,2}|(TIE|TB))(\\.|\\))? *","","a"},
        {"(?i)(.*\n)+\n*.*toss-?ups\n*","","f"}, // *
        {"(\n *)+","\n","a"},
        {"(?i)((.+\n?ANSWER:.+\n)*)(.*\n)+.*bon(uses|i)\n","$1‡ß","f"}, // *
        };
        // more stuff

I originally thought the drastically lengthened search time was because it was looking through the rest of the files, which aren't large at all, but replaceFirst() fires normally, so it's a problem with the actual expression. How do I fix this so that it runs in a time comparable to the others?

Pardon my french, but that thing is a clusterf**k.

Why is it in a 2d String array?

And the first regex: {"\t+" , "" , "a"}
And the second: {"<.*?>\n*" , "\n","a"}

Having your regexes separated like that and ultimately storing them in a 2d string array is confusing and silly.

String replace1 = "";
String regex1 = "[\ta]"

text.replaceAll( regex, replace );

Jesus I'm not going to attempt to decipher that mess. How the フck could anyone understand anything of what you're trying to do with and how you're doing it and why it doesn't work by pasting a long ass dustercluck of a regex like that?

Read the Java Regex Tutorial again. And if you haven't already...
Lesson: Regular Expressions (The Java™ Tutorials > Essential Classes)

As mobydickus said, it is difficult to decipher what that code you posted actually does. Would you be able to provide a SSCEE or at least the entire java code for that regex class?