Java Regex Word Boundaries

Question

Hi I have the following code which is meant to find the word "is" but not when it is within another string so the word "this" should not return a match so I use \b. But the following code does not find a match and I cant figure out why? ``` public static void main(String[] args) { String a = "This island is beautiful."; Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\bis\b"); Matcher m = p.matcher(a); while(m.find()){ System.out.println(a.substring(m.start(), m.end())); } } ```

Accepted Answer

Double escape it:

```
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\bis\b");
```

Regex in Java requires you to doubly escape certain special regex symbols, one escaping for Java and another for underlying regex engine.

Java Regex Word Boundaries

Solution

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