Regular Expression "." (dot) Metacharacter in Java

The subexpression/metacharacter “.” matches any single character except a newline.

Example1

import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class MatchesAll {    public static void main( String args[] ) {       String regex = ".";       String input = "Hi how are you welcome to Tutorialspoint";       Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex);       Matcher m = p.matcher(input);       int count = 0;       while(m.find()) {          count++;       }       System.out.println("Number of matches: "+count);    } }

Output

Number of matches: 40

Example 2

The following Java program accepts 5 strings from the user and prints the four-letter words ending with e.

import java.util.Scanner; import java.util.regex.Matcher; import java.util.regex.Pattern; public class RegexExample {    public static void main( String args[] ) {       String regex = "...e";       Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);       System.out.println("Enter 5 input strings: ");       String input[] = new String[5];       for (int i=0; i<5; i++) {          input[i] = sc.nextLine();       }       //Creating a Pattern object       Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex);       System.out.println("four letter words that ends with e: ");       for(int i=0; i<5;i++) {          //Creating a Matcher object          Matcher m = p.matcher(input[i]);          if(m.matches()) {             System.out.println(m.group());          }       }    } }

Output

Enter 5 input strings: hive sample wife life naive four letter words that ends with e: hive wife life