java - Regular expression wtih an escaped closing bracket at the end -

this java/regular expression question.

i search "m(x)" in text string in java program using following snippet:

public static list<string> findpattern(string patternstr, string value) {     arraylist<string> matchedstrings = new arraylist<string>(5);     pattern pattern = pattern.compile(patternstr);               matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(value);     while (matcher.find()) {         matchedstrings.add(matcher.group(0));     }     return matchedstrings; } 

the following pattern string works:

m\\\\(x\\\\) 

the following pattern doesn't:

\\\\bm\\\\(x\\\\)\\\\b 

i use \\b such can find match text "m(x) = abc" , not "tm(x) = abc". interesting, testing had done, "\\b" seems fail if character right before escaped bracket.

is there wrong? or there can achieve same objective?

thanks , regards

see, \b word boundary anchor. in other words, marks place right in between word characters (letters, digits, underscore) , non-word ones (the rest).

the point is, both ')' , ' ' (space character) non-word characters, there no word boundary between them. if expect in pattern, it'll fail.

so, can drop trailing \b pattern, turning into...

 \\bm\\(x\\)