Undocumented Java regex character class: \p{C}

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I found an interesting regex in a Java project: "[\\p{C}&&\\S]"

I understand that the && means "set intersection", and \S is "non-whitespace", but what is \p{C}, and is it okay to use?

The java.util.regex.Pattern documentation doesn't mention it. The only similar class on the list is \p{Cntrl}, but they behave differently: they both match on control characters, but \p{C} matches twice on Unicode characters above U+FFFF, such as PILE OF POO:

public class StrangePattern {
    public static void main(String[] argv) {

        // As far as I can tell, this is the simplest way to create a String
        // with code points above U+FFFF.
        String poo = new String(Character.toChars(0x1F4A9));

        System.out.println(poo);  // prints ``
        System.out.println(poo.replaceAll("\\p{C}", "?"));  // prints `??`
        System.out.println(poo.replaceAll("\\p{Cntrl}", "?"));  // prints ``
    }
}

The only mention I've found anywhere is here:

\p{C} or \p{Other}: invisible control characters and unused code points.

However, \p{Other} does not seem to exist in Java, and the matching code points are not unused.

My Java version info:

$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_92"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_92-b14)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.92-b14, mixed mode)

Bonus question: what is the likely intent of the original pattern, "[\\p{C}&&\\S]"? It occurs in a method which validates a string before it is sent in an email: if that pattern is matched, an exception with the message "Invalid string" is raised.

unicode regex java
4 Answers

As for the Bonus question: the expression [\\p{C}&&\\S] finds control characters excluding whitespace characters like tabs or line feeds in Java. These characters have no value in regular mails and therefore it is a good idea to filter them away (or, as in this case, declare an email content as faulty). Be aware that the double backslashes (\\) are only necessary to escape the expression for Java processing. The correct regular expression would be: [\p{C}&&\S]

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