[GROOVY-3697] Enhance consistency of regex/pattern DGM methods

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.7-beta-1
• Fix Version/s: 1.6.8, 1.7.1, 1.8-beta-1
• Assignee: Paul King
• Reporter: Dierk König
• Created: 22/Aug/09 08:24
• Updated: 07/Apr/15 19:12
• Resolved: 13/Feb/10 23:55

Description

Most regex/pattern based DGM methods try to allow both, the regex as a String or as a Pattern.
Here are the counter-examples:

String
String replaceFirst(Pattern pattern, String replacement)
boolean matches(Pattern pattern)
Object splitEachLine(String regex) {match -> ... }
String replaceAll(String regex) {match -> ... }
String replaceAll(Pattern pattern, String replacement)

File
Object splitEachLine(String sep) {match -> ... }

Reader
Object splitEachLine(String sep) {match -> ... }

InputStream
Object splitEachLine(String sep, String charset) {match -> ... } 

Object splitEachLine(String sep) {match -> ... } 

A special case is 'minus', which is particularly bad as you can provide a regex string but this
will not be treated as a regex since that would conflict with String.minus(String).