Are there named groups in Groovy regex pattern matches?

Question

Something like:

def match = "John 19" =~ /(&name&)\w+ (&age&\d+)/
def name = match.name
def age = match.age

Is there a groovy syntax that allows for something like this (instead of of the fictional & operator I made up?

Answer 1

Assuming you are using on Java 7+, you can do:

def matcher = 'John 19' =~ /(?<name>\w+) (?<age>\d+)/
if( matcher.matches() ) {
  println "Matches"
  assert matcher.group( 'name' ) == 'John'
  assert matcher.group( 'age' ) == '19'
}
else {
  println "No Match"
}

If you are not on java 7 yet, you'd need a third party regex library

Answer 2

This doesn't name the groups, but a closure does parameterise the match:

("John 19" =~ /(\w+) (\d+)/).each {match, name, age ->
  println match
  println name
  println age
}

which outputs:

John 19
John
19

This is a useful reference: http://naleid.com/blog/2008/05/19/dont-fear-the-regexp/