regex example for a citation

[jay vas]

Hi guys im having trouble building a regex. I think it should be
simple (shouldnt we be able to use the * character anywhere ???) But
Im getting a dangling meta character exception.

String example = "Jay Vas,Java Regexes in Action, 1980";
 
String pattern = "*,*.*";
 
public static void main(String[] args)
{
   System.out.println(Pattern.matches(pattern,example));
}
 

I know this should be really simple but can someone throw me a bone on
how to match the example string to a java regex pattern ?

[Ilja Preuss]

* means that the *preceding* character/group can occur an arbitrary number of times. Therefore * cannot possibly be the very first character in a regex.