Regex expressions in Java, \\s vs. \\s+

Question

Can anyone help me understand the difference between these expressions:

x = x.replaceAll("\\s", "");

x = x.replaceAll("\\s+", "");

Answer 1

Basically, \\s helps us to match for the single whitespace character whereas, \\s+ helps us to match the sequence of more than one whitespace character. It would be more efficient if you use \\s+.

I hope this will help.

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Answer 2

Regular expressions(regex) in java are used for matching patterns in Strings.

The expressions \\s & \\ s+ both are used to match white spaces characters but they behave differently. \\s: This matches any single whitespace character which will include newline,unicode white space characters,spaces & tabs. \\s+ : This Matches one or more white space characters and the + quantifier means one or more of the preceding element.