krzysiekruczaj / substring-expressions

The goal of this project is to provided syntax similar to regular expressions that allows to check if provided expression is part of another string.

Substring expressions

Overview

The goal of this project is to provided syntax similar to regular expressions that allows to check if provided expression is part of another string.

Project requirements:

Write a program that takes 2 string parameters from the command line. Program must verify if the second string is a substring of the first string (you cannot use substr, substring or any other standard function including regular expression libraries).

Each occurrence of * in the second substring means that it can be a match for zero or more characters of the first string.

Consider the example:

Input string 1: abcd
Input string 2: a*c

Program should evaluate that the string 2 is a substring of the string 1.

Additionally asterisk (*) may be considered as a regular character, if it is preceded by a backslash (\). Backslash (\) is considered as a regular character in all cases other than preceding the asterisk (*).

Building project

The project can be built with single command:

./gradlew clean fatJar

Usage

java -cp build/libs/substring-expressions-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar it.ruczaj.expressions.SubstringCheckerMain inputString comparedExpression

Example of usage

java -cp build/libs/substring-expressions-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar it.ruczaj.expressions.SubstringCheckerMain "1234*a" "1234\**"