How to use Regex?

[soulmed]

I've seen on a Java tutorial website how to use regex but it always returns false even when it is true.

I've done a simplified version of my code to make it easier to assist me.

import javax.swing.JOptionPane;

public class test {
	static String text = "sdijv";
	
	public static void main (String[] args) {
		JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "" + text.matches("^[a-z]$"));
		
	}
}

[KevinWorkman]

What do you think that regular expression is "saying"? Why do you think that should match?

[soulmed]

to my understanding, that regex should validate that all characters in the string are letters between a to z and nothing else.

[soulmed]

I found the problem... I didn't put in the brakets beside my letters. The regex should go like follow: ^[a-z]{1,}$

[DarrylBurke]

'One or more times' is more conventionally written as '+'

^[a-z]+$

Also, since you want to match repetition of a single character class (using matches -- not find) to the entire String, including the start and end of input are redundant.

[a-z]+

db

edit There's also a posix character class \p{Lower} which is equivalent to [a-z]. Read the documentation for Pattern.

[soulmed]

thank you for the advice.