Any Character Including Newline - Java Regex

Any character including newline - Java Regex

The dot cannot be used inside character classes.

See the option Pattern.DOTALL.

Pattern.DOTALL Enables dotall mode. In dotall mode, the expression . matches any character, including a line terminator. By default this expression does not match line terminators. Dotall mode can also be enabled via the embedded flag expression (?s). (The s is a mnemonic for "single-line" mode, which is what this is called in Perl.)

If you need it on just a portion of the regular expression, you use e.g. [\s\S].

Java Regex is including new line in match

Try using the Pattern.MULTILINE option

Pattern rgx = Pattern.compile("^(\\S+)$", Pattern.MULTILINE);

This causes the regex to recognise line delimiters in your string, otherwise ^ and $ just match the start and end of the string.

Although it makes no difference for this pattern, the Matcher.group() method returns the entire match, whereas the Matcher.group(int) method returns the match of the particular capture group (...) based on the number you specify. Your pattern specifies one capture group which is what you want captured. If you'd included \s in your Pattern as you wrote you tried, then Matcher.group() would have included that whitespace in its return value.

How do I match any character across multiple lines in a regular expression?

It depends on the language, but there should be a modifier that you can add to the regex pattern. In PHP it is:

/(.*)<FooBar>/s

The s at the end causes the dot to match all characters including newlines.

In Java regex how to match newline character

I believe the issue is that the Pattern.MULTILNE is incorrect. For the particular example, it should be Pattern.DOTALL (or embed the ?s in the expression).

MULTILINE:

Enables multiline mode.

In multiline mode the expressions ^ and $ match just after or just before, respectively, a line terminator or the end of the input sequence. By default these expressions only match at the beginning and the end of the entire input sequence.

Multiline mode can also be enabled via the embedded flag expression (?m).

DOTALL:

In dotall mode, the expression . matches any character, including a line terminator. By default this expression does not match line terminators.

A working example using DOTALL

Java Regex does not match newline

UPDATE:

Based on your comments, you need something like this:

.*(?:[ \r\n\t].*)+

EXPLANATION:

In plain words, it is a regex that matches a line, then 1 or more lines. Or, just a multiline text.

• .* - 0 or more characters other than a newline
• (?:[ \r\n\t].*)+ - a non-capturing group that matches 1 or more times a sequence of
  
  
  • [ \r\n\t] - either a space, or a \r or \n or \t
  • .* - 0 or more characters other than a newline

See demo

Original answer

You can fix your pattern 2 ways:

String REGEX = ".*(?:\r\n|[ \t\r\n]).*";

This way we match either \r\n sequence, or any character in the character class.

Or (since the character class only matches 1 character, we can add + after it to capture 1 or more:

String REGEX = ".*[ \t\r\n]+.*";

See IDEONE demo

Note that it is not a good idea to use single characters in alternations, it decreases performance.

Also note that capturing groups should not be overused. If you do not plan to use the contents of the group, use non-capturing groups ((?:...)), or remove them.

Regex to match any character including new lines

Add the s modifier to your regex to cause . to match newlines:

$string =~ /(START)(.+?)(END)/s;

How to match any character in regular expression?

Yes, you can. That should work.

• . = any char except newline
• \. = the actual dot character
• .? = .{0,1} = match any char except newline zero or one times
• .* = .{0,} = match any char except newline zero or more times
• .+ = .{1,} = match any char except newline one or more times

java new line regular expression

By default . matches every character except new line character.

In this case, you will need DOTALL option, which will make . matches any character, including new line character. DOTALL option can be specified inline as (?s). For example:

(?s)<ABC>((.|\\n)+?)</ABC>

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