Matcher class hitEnd method

[The_Nick]

Directly from the official API: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/doc ... tcher.html

hitEnd

public boolean hitEnd()

Returns true if the end of input was hit by the search engine in the last match operation performed by this matcher.

When this method returns true, then it is possible that more input would have changed the result of the last search.

Returns:
true iff the end of input was hit in the last match; false otherwise
Since:

What do they mean with their latter statement?

When this method returns true, then it is possible that more input would have changed the result of the last search.

Thanks in advance.

The_Nick.

[admin]

It basically means that there was a partial match at the end. For example, if you search for "cat" it in "bobca", it will return true.

Code: Select all

    String sp1 = "cat";
    Pattern p1 = Pattern.compile(sp1);
    String str = "bobca";
    Matcher m = p1.matcher(str);
    while(m.find()){
    }
    System.out.println(m.hitEnd());

So it is telling you that if there was more text available in the input string, it could have found a match. In this case, had there been a 't' at the end, it could have found a match.

HTH,
Paul.