Using the - key to stand for a string of characters

Question

If I am seraching for all the words that start with V,v and end with C,c. What is the best way to do this?
I want to make - stand for [a-z and A-Z]
so that the user could just enter something at the command-line such as V-C.
But, I know if I do this then the user could also use that - variable at the end of their argument such as VC- which I do not want. I only want to run the program if - is in the middle of text
v-c = good
vc- = bad
-vc =bad
I'm just thinking out loud but if I were to run an if loop that only used the argument at the command line if it fulfilled the following conditions
if (argv[0] =[V,v][-][C,c]
//run program
else
(exit program)
Am I thinking along the right way? (probably not... )
Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

import java.io.*;
public class StartsWith {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String search = args[0];
for (int i=0; i < search.length (); i++) {
if (search.startsWith ("[AEIOUaeiou]*") !=false){
System.out.print("CORRECT");
if (search.startsWith ("[AEIOUaeiou]*") !=true){
System.out.print("ERROR");
}Whenever I add a word even if it starts with a vowel
I always get error...
Can anyone see why?
Thanks for the advice.I think I can understand how startswith works. It just excepts a "text" as opposed to other otpions...
Regex it is...