An REMatchEnumeration enumerates regular expression matches over a
given input text. You obtain a reference to an enumeration using
the getMatchEnumeration() methods on an instance of
RE.
REMatchEnumeration does lazy computation; that is, it will not
search for a match until it needs to. If you'd rather just get all
the matches at once in a big array, use the
getAllMatches() methods on RE. However, using an
enumeration can help speed performance when the entire text does
not need to be searched immediately.
The enumerated type is especially useful when searching on a Reader
or InputStream, because the InputStream read position cannot be
guaranteed after calling getMatch() (see the
description of that method for an explanation of why). Enumeration
also saves a lot of overhead required when calling
getMatch() multiple times.
author:
Wes Biggs | 