Question

I’ve checked every single post that I can find on here, but can’t figure this out.

I have a string which looks something like this: “ABC1234598901AC”

I’m trying to use a Regular Expression to match “5989” within the string, but I want to be able to match that string even if one of the characters is something different.

To simplify, let’s say I am searching the string for “59(Random Character that’s not 8)9”.

Right now here is my Regular Expression: “59[^8]9” but when I use the Matcher in Java it is not matching at all.

Here’s the code I’m using to test this:

Matcher test = Pattern.compile("59[^8]9").matcher("ABC1234598901AC");

if (test.matches())

{

System.out.println(test.start());

System.out.println(test.end());

}

Test.matches() is never evaluating to true.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

You want to use test.find(), not test.matches().

Matcher.matches() requires your pattern to match the entire input (thus you would need to surround the pattern with .* for it to match), whereas Matcher.find() searches the input string for the first (and then subsequent) substring that matches your pattern.