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I am currently developping a regex to catch a number in a xml test. 

<items><item id='123' something_cool='61461651'></item><items>

I used '.*item id='\d'.*' and it works ! However is there a way to do it without '.*' at the begining and the end of the regex ?

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    Regex is not best tool to parse XML/HTML. Why not just use proper parser? (more info: Can you provide some examples of why it is hard to parse XML and HTML with a regex?) Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 14:41
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    But to answer your question. .* are mandatory if you are using matches method and your regex describes only fragment, since purpose of matches is to check if entire string can be matched by regex. If you want to get only part of text which matches regex you need to use Matcher#find. Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 14:42
  • I don't want to parse all my message for only one field. Here we have a simple xml. But my true xml is really more complexe. And the regex is more complexe. Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 14:43
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    The question is: are you really sure that your XML is "specific" enough so that any regex you are using will be working for all potential inputs? Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 14:45
  • @Pshemo Awesome ! It is exactly what I needed ! Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 14:46
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