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provides pattern matching abstraction to flexibly choose between regex and glob.

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/* Copyright (c) The m-m-m Team, Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 */
package net.sf.mmm.util.pattern.api;

import java.util.regex.Pattern;

/**
 * This is the interface for a compiler that can {@link #compile(String) compile} an pattern-expression given as string
 * into a {@link Pattern}. 

 * The intention is to abstract from {@link Pattern#compile(String, int)} and therefore also allow other dialects like
 * glob-patterns.
 *
 * @author Joerg Hohwiller (hohwille at users.sourceforge.net)
 * @since 1.0.0
 */
public interface PatternCompiler {

  /**
   * @see Pattern#compile(String)
   *
   * @param pattern is the expression to be compiled as pattern.
   * @return the compiled pattern. May only return {@code null} if explicitly documented by the underlying
   *         implementation. E.g. if the given {@code pattern} is just a plain string without wildcards.
   * @throws IllegalArgumentException if the given {@code pattern} has illegal syntax for the underlying compiler.
   */
  Pattern compile(String pattern) throws IllegalArgumentException;

}