#   
## Overview

The **`Pattern.COMMENTS` flag** is used to ignore whitespace and comments in evaluation of a string.

The **`CASE_INSENSITIVE` field** of the `Pattern` class is used for allowing whitespace and comments in the regex pattern. 

Enabling this flag ignores the whitespaces and comments starting with `#` until the #key# end of the line :EOL #key# in the given regex string.

Examples of regex with whitespace and comments include:
* `(.*) # Matching everything`
* `[a-zA-Z] # Matching English Alphabets`

#   
## Syntax

```
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.COMMENTS);
```

The **`Pattern.compile` method** takes the regex and match flags as arguments. Ignoring comments while pattern matching can be achieved by passing `Pattern.COMMENTS` flag as the match flag.

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

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String string = "Hello EDUCATIVE,how aRe yOU? With educative you learn things easily";

        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("educative # Looking for educative", Pattern.COMMENTS);

        Matcher match = pattern.matcher(string);

        System.out.println("Matched characters:");
        while (match.find()) {
            System.out.println(match.group());
        }
    }
}

What is Pattern.COMMENTS in Java?

Overview

Syntax

Example