Need java regex to match substring with multiple whitespace, only one punctuation

Question

I want to make sure that the substring I am matching only has one possible piece of punctuation and as much whitespace as necessary. This is inside of a much longer REGEX, currently what there is is the following:

[\p{P},\s]

but that will match all punctuation and whitespace, so that it accepts:

the string before,,,, ,,,. ....the string after when what I want it to match is any amount of whitespace in between the string before and the string after, with only one item of punctuation allowed- note that the punctuation can come at the beginning of the string, at the end, or with as much whitespace before or after.

Answer 1

what I want it to match is any amount of whitespace in between the string before and the string after, with only one item of punctuation allowed

Try this:

\s*\p{P}\s*

Explanation:

\s*   Match any amount of whitespace
\p{P} Match a single punctuation character
\s*   Match any amount of whitespace

Note that in Java string literals the backslashes need escaping.