Question

/*
    patString: it$
    input: this is it
    the output at 2 to the match operation at 1 is false, why?
*/

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import java.io.Console;

public class Test {
    public static void main(String args[])  {
        Console con = System.console();
        String patString, input;
        patternString  = con.readLine("Enter pattern: "); //pattern 
        input =  con.readLine("input: "); // input string to match against pattern
        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(patString);
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
        boolean testMatch = matcher.matches(); //1
        System.out.println("match found: " + testMatch); //2
    }
}

Answer 1

the Matcher.matches() method tries to match the whole string against the given pattern, or in other words, it has an implicit ^...$ surrounding the pattern.

You want the find() method

From the javadoc for Matcher:

• matcher(): Attempts to match the entire input sequence against the pattern
• find(): Attempts to find the next subsequence of the input sequence that matches the pattern.