String

The Java String as you know it. There are different ways to create strings in Marcel

Simple strings

You can use the single quote character (') to create strings

'Hello world!'

Interpolated strings

You can use the double quote character (") to create strings resolving variables

"$firstName $lastName is $age years old"

If you need to access a property, use the brackets

"${person.firstName} ${person.lastName} is ${person.age} years old"

Pattern strings

You can instantiate Patterns using backslash strings. These strings are reserved for pattern only.

The backslash is not considered as an escape, except for the backlash character (which would be escaped as \/).

r/some \w+/

Note that such strings doesn't resolve variables. If you want to construct a Pattern while resolving Strings, you could just call the Pattern.compile(String) method with an interpolated string.

It is good practise to end such regexes with a semi-colon (;) character, to make it clear to the compiler that what follows is not a regex flag (we'll talk about that just after) but a 'real' identifier.

E.g.

Pattern pattern = r/myPattern/; // without the semi-colon, Marcel would think that 'println' characters are regex flags
println(pattern)

Pattern flags

You can also specify flags by adding a suffix at the end of your regex String.

Pattern pattern = r/myPattern/iu; // you can specify many flags at once
println(pattern)

Here is the list of flags (you can see the doc of each flag in the Javadoc of the Pattern's class).