Disable string escaping (backslash hell)

Question

I've started using Java regexes and I find I have to write patterns like this (contrived example):

C:\\\\\\\\windows\\\\\\\\system\\\\d+

to match

C:\\windows\\system32

Is there any way to use java regex without insane amounts of backslashes?

Answer 1

Use Pattern.quote(String s) (click for documentation)

It treats all meta characters in the passed String as literal characters (but you still must escape backslashes in construction of a String literal). This lets you type \\\\ instead of \\\\\\\\ to denote an actual/literal \\ in the regex pattern. But this also means that any other special characters will be interpreted literally as well (such as \\d+ in your example).

But in your example, you could use: Pattern.quote("C:\\\\windows\\\\system") + "\\\\d+";

Test it with this: System.out.println("C:\\\\windows\\\\system32".matches(Pattern.quote("C:\\\\windows\\\\system") + "\\\\d+"));