I don't think comons lang has a routine for converting a standard wildcard string (with * and ?) to a regex. Here is a first suggestion, although I'm sure it can be improved.
public Pattern createPattern(String text) { StringTokenizer tkn = new StringTokenizer(text, "?*", true); StringBuilder buf = new StringBuilder(text.length() + 10); buf.append('^'); boolean lastStar = false; while (tkn.hasMoreTokens()) { String str = tkn.nextToken(); if (str.equals("?")) { buf.append('.'); lastStar = false; } else if (str.equals("*")) { if (lastStar == false) { buf.append(".*"); } lastStar = true; } else { buf.append(Pattern.quote(str)); lastStar = false; } } buf.append('$'); return Pattern.compile(buf.toString(), Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE); } Other possile conversions would be * and ? to databse wildcards, so perhaps there is scope for a few related methods here? Stephen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org