Groovy supports regular expressions natively using the ~"..." expression. Plus Groovy supports the =~ (create Matcher) and ==~ (matches regex) operators. e.g.

import java.util.regex.Matcher
import java.util.regex.Pattern

assert "cheesecheese" =~ "cheese"

// lets create a regex Pattern pattern = ~"foo" assert pattern instanceof Pattern assert pattern.matcher("foo").matches()

// lets create a Matcher matcher = "cheesecheese" =~ "cheese" assert matcher instanceof Matcher answer = matcher.replaceAll("edam")

// lets do some replacement cheese = ("cheesecheese" =~ "cheese").replaceFirst("nice") assert cheese == "nicecheese"