Custom reg-exp classes?

Question

Does anyone know of a way to define custom regular expression classes in Java? For example, they have \p{Upper} for uppercase alpha chars. What I'd like to be able to do is create user-defined type that I could use within several more complex expressions instead of typing the whole long base again.
\p{MyBase} = [A-Z]{1,4}|[A-Z]{4}[A-Z&&[^X]]
then use it like
\p{MyBase}\\.[A-Z]{1}
\p{MyBase}/[A-Z]{1}
\p{MyBase}-[A-Z]{1}
(I know I could do ORs for the 3 situations, but I need to determine them separately.)
thanks

Answer 1

The only Java regex tool I know of that includes this capability is the stevesoft package. The best you can do with the JDK regex package is to build the regex from String fragments as needed, which isn't much of a solution.