Introduction
This article is part of the Scala knowledge bits Series.
Periodically, I will publish new exercises so you can slowly build up knowledge about Scala.
It is designed to be done in a very short amount of time and learn a little bit each day, just to create a routine.
This episode will teach you about Scala Regex.
Hope you are going to enjoy it! It is designed for anyone to learn Scala from scratch and slowly learn, one Bit at a time.
After this Bit, I would love to hear your feedback in the comments down below.
Feel free to join the Discord server as well if you would like some help and support from the rest of our community.
What are we learning today?
Today we are going to learn about Scala Regex !
This SKB is about Regex, which stand for Regular Expression.
I will not explain the details about Regex in this article but feel free to look at those resources to learn more about it:
- To learn: github.com/ziishaned/learn-regex
- To learn and practice: Regex One
- To practice: Regex Crossword
Time to try on the exercise on your own and scroll down for more information when you are done or if you are stuck.
Exercise
Here is an exercise to complete today.
If I did my job well, you should be able to guess by yourself the solution based on what you previously learned and based on the clues.
But if you get stuck, scroll down to get more information.
The goal of the exercise is to replace the ??? by a piece of code so that the exercise compiles and that’s how you win! Good luck!
You can fill the exercise right in here:
Or, if it does not load, go on to Scastie (I7Vt5quwT2OLFVHbrpyHlw).
More information about Scala Regex
In this exercise you will learn (or have learned, if you have already solved the puzzle) about Scala Regex.
The first example is a simple case to check for a match. However the compilation of the regex into an actionable test can be costly. It is recommended to compile the regex once before using it several times. This is when the second example come into play.
The second example is more complex and involved. We describe a structure to hold the regex and build a case class from it. We can then build shortcut methods to make the interaction with the regex more intuitive.
The third example is leveraging pattern matching. You can see each group match in the regex ( ... ) is corresponding to a value in the pattern matching.
Feel free to go back to the exercise, modify the code to try out new things and get a better intuition for Scala Regex.
Conclusion
I hope you have learned something new or had fun during this Scala Knowledge Bit.
Please ask questions or post feedback in the comments below.
Feel free to try on the next Scala Knowledege Bit.
If you are curious about the previous Scala knowledge Bits, go check it out! 🙂