String.matches() faulty?

Question

I wondered why my regExp didn't work when I called it with
myString.matches(searchString);So I wrote this test code:
        System.out.println("Test: if substring exists:");
        String text = "Using org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser as SAX2 Parser";
        String search = "as SAX2 Parser";
        String regExp = "\\S*("+search.toUpperCase()+"\\S*)";
        Pattern pat = Pattern.compile(regExp);
        Matcher m = pat.matcher(text.toUpperCase());
        while (m.find()) {
            System.out.println("found2: "+text.substring(m.start(), m.end()));
        System.out.println("Same with String.matches:");
        System.out.println("found2: "+text.matches(regExp));and the first custom code matches the regExp and the String.matches() doesn't match. What's the catch?

Answer 1

"abc" -> find ("b") -> finds "b"
"abc".matches("b") -> returns false
"b".matches("b") -> returns false
"abc".matches(".b.") > returns trueIf you'd like you could say that matches assumes an
implicit "^" at the beginning and an "$" at the end
of your regex. It tries to match the entire
string and if it doesn't capture it all it returns
false.Why is
"b".matches("b") -> returns false?