Weird behavior with regular expressions

[Dinkar Chaturvedi]

The following code works fine

		Pattern p = Pattern.compile("a*b");
		Matcher m = p.matcher("aaaab");
		System.out.println("Result: " + m.matches());

The following doesn't.

		Pattern p = Pattern.compile("v*");
		Matcher m = p.matcher("vvyadav");
		System.out.println("Result: " + m.matches());

Any idea why?

[Matthew Brown]

Matcher.matches() tries to match the entire string to the pattern. Your pattern will match against any number of 'v's, but it won't match anything that isn't a 'v'.

Perhaps you intended Pattern.compile("v.*") ?

[Dinkar Chaturvedi]

Hmm!! That is interesting.

What if I want to find if the pattern v* occurs in the string vyadav?

[Jesper de Jong]

Look in the API documentation of class Matcher - there are other methods besides matches() that do what you are looking for.

Here's a hint...:

Dinkar Chaturvedi wrote:What if I want to find if the pattern v* occurs in the string vyadav?

[Dinkar Chaturvedi]

Thanks a lot!! I didnt realize that there are other methods as I am used to the functionality with find() method instead of looking for the entire string as a match.

Thanks anyway, this helped a big lot!!