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Asked: 2026-05-26T00:10:55+00:00

I can’t figure out why this regex doesn’t work, I’ve tested it in php

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I can’t figure out why this regex doesn’t work, I’ve tested it in php and other regex engines where it works fine and matches “,AA,”.

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(^|,)AA(,|$)");

Matcher m = p.matcher("A,B,AA,C,D");

//assigns as false  
boolean matches = m.matches();

Side note: I have a split/array binary search method for doing an IN_SET / NOT_IN_SET search against the string. This is just an example I need to get working before implementing regex as another comparing option.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    matches() validates the entire string. You want to use find() instead.

    From the API:

    matches()

    Attempts to match the entire region against the pattern.

    — http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/regex/Matcher.html#matches()

    and:

    find()

    Attempts to find the next subsequence of the input sequence that matches the pattern.

    — http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/regex/Matcher.html#find()

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