Java regex doesn't work

Question

Having a slight regex problem. I wrote to following code to check if a word is contained within a String.

boolean matches = Pattern.matches("\\b" + Pattern.quote(item.name) + "\\b", nap.code);

item.name will be something like "half" nap.code will be something like "int halfOfFour() { return half(4); }"

Yet, my pattern match returns false... What am I doing wrong here?

Also... Is there anyway to make this return false if the word is contained within a string?

Answer 1

I think the pattern match will match the whole string not just a part of it. so prefix with .* and postfix with .* or something.

use pattern and matches separately and then use "find()" in matcher to find submatches

Answer 2

Wouldn't the Java.lang.String.contains() method do what you want?

boolean contains = nap.code.contains(item.name);

EDIT : To return true only if the word is present, using the \\W pattern (non-word character) should help you :

\W*(YOUR_WORD)\W*