Table 11 Regular expressions used in the process of linking Stack Overflow threads with API elements

1)

((?s)(/.*?/))|(//.*)

Regex for matching comments inside “/* */” or preceded by “//”

2)

((?s)(.̈*?)̈)

Regex for matching natural language text inside “”

3)

(∖ bElementShortName ∖b)

Regex for API element short name boundary matching. For example:

the regex (∖ bJCheckBox ∖b) matches JCheckBox but does

not match JCheckBoxMenuItem

4)

(∖ bElementShortName ∖b)(?!.PartialShortNames)

Regex for API element short name boundary matching with negative look-ahead. For example: the regex(∖ bDefaultTableCellRenderer ∖b)(?!.UIResource)matches DefaultTableCellRenderer but does not matchDefaultTableCellRenderer.UIResource

5)

(?∖ bElementShortName ∖b)

Regex for API element short name boundary matching with negative look-behind. For example: the regex (?<!ScrollPaneLayout.|BasicComboBoxEditor.) (∖ bUIResource ∖b) matches UIResource but does not match neitherScrollPaneLayout.UIResource nor BasicComboBoxEditor.UIResource

6)

(∖b([A-Z_]+[a-z_0-9]+)2, ∖b)| (∖b([A-Z_])2,[a-z_0-9]+ ∖b)| ([̱A-Z_]+[a-z_0-9]+[A-Z_]+ ∖b)

Regex for matching multi-word API element short name (camel case). For example: the regex matches SwingUtilities,JFrame, HTMLDocument and TextUI, but does not matchView and HTML