How to match “any character” in regular expression?

Question

The following should be matched:

AAA123
ABCDEFGH123
XXXX123

can I do: \".*123\" ?

Answer 1

There are lots of sophisticated regex testing and development tools, but if you just want a simple test harness in Java, here's one for you to play with:

    String[] tests = {
        "AAA123",
        "ABCDEFGH123",
        "XXXX123",
        "XYZ123ABC",
        "123123",
        "X123",
        "123",
    };
    for (String test : tests) {
        System.out.println(test + " " +test.matches(".+123"));
    }

Now you can easily add new testcases and try new patterns. Have fun exploring regex.

See also

• regular-expressions.info/Tutorial