There is a type of characters called quantifiers, which defines how often another character can occur in a regex pattern. A quantifier can be written after a regular character, as well as after a special one. In general, quantifiers are one of the most essential and important features of the regex language, since they allow a single pattern to match different strings varying in length.

## The list of quantifiers

Here is a list of quantifiers to be remembered:

• + matches one or more repetitions of the preceding character;
• * matches zero or more repetitions of the preceding character;
• {n} matches exactly n repetitions of the preceding character;
• {n,m} matches at least n but not more than m repetitions of the preceding character;
• {n,} matches at least n repetitions of the preceding character;
• {0,m} matches no more than m repetitions of the preceding character.

Note, there is also another quantifier ?, which makes the preceding character optional. It is short for {0,1}. We will not consider this quantifier here, because you should already know it.

## The plus quantifier

Here we demonstrate the plus character, which matches one or more repetitions of the preceding character:

String regex = "ca+b";

"cab".matches(regex); // true
"caaaaab".matches(regex); // true
"cb".matches(regex); // false because it does not have at least one repetition of 'a'


As you can see, it matches only those strings which have one or more repetition of the 'a' character.

## The star quantifier

The example below demonstrates the star character, which matches zero or more repetitions of the preceding character:

String regex = "A[0-3]*";

"A".matches(regex);  // true because the pattern matches zero or more repetitions
"A0".matches(regex); // true
"A000111222333".matches(regex); // true


As you can see, the star quantifier, unlike the plus quantifier, allows the pattern to match also the strings that do not have the “quantified” character at all.

In the following example, there is a pattern describing the string “John” located between an undefined number of undefined characters in the text:

String johnRegex = ".*John.*"; // it matches all strings containing the substring "John"

String textWithJohn = "My friend John is a computer programmer";

textWithJohn.matches(johnRegex); // true

String john = "John";

john.matches(johnRegex); // true

String textWithoutJohn = "My friend is a computer programmer";

textWithoutJohn.matches(johnRegex); // false


So, the star quantifier can be used to check whether a substring of a string matches a pattern. Using it, we can skip spaces or any other characters we don’t want to predict in our pattern.

## Specifying the number of repetitions

Both previous quantifiers have a wide range of applications, but they do not allow you to specify how many times a character can be repeated. Fortunately, there is a group of quantifiers that allow specifying the number of repetitions in curly braces{n}{n,m}{n,}.

An important clarification: no spaces are supposed to be used inside curly braces. There can be only one or two numbers and, optionally, a comma. Putting spaces inside curly braces leads to the “deactivation” of the quantifier and, as a result, a totally different regular expression. For example, "a{1, 2}" will match only the exact string "a{1, 2}", not "a" or "aa".

Take a look at the example, where we demonstrate how to match exactly n repetitions of the preceding character using the {n} quantifier:

String regex = "[0-9]{4}"; // four digits

"6342".matches(regex);  // true
"9034".matches(regex);  // true

"182".matches(regex);   // false
"54312".matches(regex); // false


Matching from n to m repetitions is possible thanks to {n,m} quantifier. Note that the range specified in curly braces both starts and ends inclusivelym encountered repetitions also count as a match. This is standard for the regex language regardless of the implementation, although it may sound a bit counter-intuitive for Java users, since Java’s ranges end exclusively.

String regex = "1{2,3}";

"1".matches(regex);    // false
"11".matches(regex);   // true
"111".matches(regex);  // true
"1111".matches(regex); // false


The last example demonstrates how to match at least n repetitions using the {n,} quantifier:

String regex = "ab{4,}";

"abb".matches(regex); // false, not enough 'b'
"abbbb".matches(regex); // true
"abbbbbbb".matches(regex); // true


The quantifier that matches not more than m repetitions works similarly. Try it yourself.

## Conclusions

The key points of this topic are:

• in the regex language, quantifiers allow us to match strings varying in length.
• the star quantifier matches zero or more repetitions of the preceding character.
• the plus quantifier is almost the same as the star, with the exception that it doesn’t match the absence of a character. The minimum number of repetitions for it is one.
• curly braces allow more careful control of the number of repetitions: you can specify the minimum or the maximum number of repetitions, or both.