Matcher's matches() method returns false, find() and groupCount() return results

Question

I have the following code:

private static final String ET_AL = \"(\\\\p{Punct}|\\\\b|^|\\\\s)et\\\\.? al\\\\.?(\\\\b|$|\\\\s)\";
private static final Pattern         


        

Answer 1

but the call to m.matches() returns false.

It is because Matcher#matches() requires you to match complete input with your regex.

From Javadoc:

public boolean matches()

Attempts to match the entire region against the pattern. If the match succeeds then more information can be obtained via the start, end, and group methods.