Upgrade Regex with a tester() method?

[Paul Sandoz]

On Jan 21, 2013, at 6:20 PM, Peter Levart <peter.levart at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Another possible point lambdafication is an idiom that is frequent with using pattern matching - replacement:
> 
> public class Pattern { ...
> 
>    public String replaceAll(String str, Function<String, String> replacementFunction) {
>        Matcher m = matcher(str);
>        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
>        while (m.find()) {
>            m.appendReplacement(sb, replacementFunction.apply(m.group(1)));
>        }
>        m.appendTail(sb);
>        return sb.toString();
>    }
> 
> so one can write:
> 
>        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\{(.*?)\\}");
>        String msg = pattern.replaceAll(
>            "User's home is: {user.home}, current dir is: {user.dir}",
> System::getProperty
> );
> 

Perhaps those function-based methods would be more appropriate on Matcher as overloads of replaceAll and replaceFirst?

Paul.

> This method could then also be overloaded on String as a shortcut without precompiled Pattern instance:
> 
> public class String {...
> 
>    public String replaceAll(String regex, Function<String, String> replacementFunction) {
>        return Pattern.compile(regex).replaceAll(this, replacementFunction);
>    }
> 
> so one could write:
> 
>    String msg = "User's home is: {user.home}, current dir is: {user.dir}"
>                     .replaceAll("\\{(.*?)\\}", System::getProperty);
>