Use of regular expression to find text in Eclipse

Problem

Find text inside Eclipse as the following standard:

• starting with a given set of characters. th for example;
• having zero or one line break inside the text;
• having in the end a semicolon “;”

Examples of expressions:

throw new RuntimeException(".newQuery() não implementado");

throw new RuntimeException(
               ". newQuery() não implementado");

Solution

Execute the search in Eclipse using the following regular expression: th.*\R?.* Explanation:

• “th” – the text must star with th;



• “.” – the point indicates that any character could be in this position;



• “*” – Asterix indicates that the previous character may appear any number of times. As the previous character is a point then the entire line will be select;



• “\R” – indicates that in this position is a line break;



• “?” – the previous character may appear zero or once. So the text may or may not have a line break in the middle;



• “.*” – already explained;



• “;” – the end character must be a semicolon