Regex to check string contains only Hex characters
Yes, you can do that with a regular expression:
^[0-9A-F]+$
Explanation:
^ Start of line. [0-9A-F] Character class: Any character in 0 to 9, or in A to F. + Quantifier: One or more of the above. $ End of line.
To use this regular expression in Java you can for example call the matches
method on a String:
boolean isHex = s.matches("[0-9A-F]+");
Note that matches
finds only an exact match so you don't need the start and end of line anchors in this case. See it working online: ideone
You may also want to allow both upper and lowercase A-F, in which case you can use this regular expression:
^[0-9A-Fa-f]+$
May be you want to use the POSIX character class \p{XDigit}
, so:
^\p{XDigit}+$
Additionally, if you plan to use the regular expression very often, it is recommended to use a constant in order to avoid recompile it each time, e.g.:
private static final Pattern REGEX_PATTERN =
Pattern.compile("^\\p{XDigit}+$");
public static void main(String[] args) {
String input = "0123456789ABCDEF";
System.out.println(
REGEX_PATTERN.matcher(input).matches()
); // prints "true"
}
Actually, the given answer is not totally correct. The problem arises because the numbers 0-9 are also decimal values. PART of what you have to do is to test for 00-99 instead of just 0-9 to ensure that the lower values are not decimal numbers. Like so:
^([0-9A-Fa-f]{2})+$
To say these have to come in pairs! Otherwise - the string is something else! :-)
Example:
(Pick one)
var a = "1e5";
var a = "10";
var a = "314159265";
If I used the accepted answer in a regular expression it would return TRUE.
var re1 = new RegExp( /^[0-9A-Fa-f]+$/ );
var re2 = new RegExp( /^([0-9A-Fa-f]{2})+$/ );
if( re1.test(a) ){ alert("#1 = This is a hex value!"); }
if( re2.test(a) ){ alert("#2 = This IS a hex string!"); }
else { alert("#2 = This is NOT a hex string!"); }
Note that the "10" returns TRUE in both cases. If an incoming string only has 0-9 you can NOT tell, easily if it is a hex value or a decimal value UNLESS there is a missing zero in front of off length strings (hex values always come in pairs - ie - Low byte/high byte). But values like "34" are both perfectly valid decimal OR hexadecimal numbers. They just mean two different things.
Also note that "3.14159265" is not a hex value no matter which test you do because of the period. But with the addition of the "{2}" you at least ensure it really is a hex string rather than something that LOOKS like a hex string.