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

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