Match asterisk with regexp

[joe mo]

Hi,
How do you match the asterisk character in a regular expression using Java. I tried escaping with a slash to no avail.
Thanks

[marc weber]

Welcome to JavaRanch!

The API for java.util.regex.Pattern explains...

Backslashes within string literals in Java source code are interpreted as required by the Java Language Specification as either Unicode escapes or other character escapes. It is therefore necessary to double backslashes in string literals that represent regular expressions to protect them from interpretation by the Java bytecode compiler.

So a regex of "\\*" (with two backslashes) will match an asterisk.

[Rob Spoor]

Please note that the regex itself is \*
You have to add the second slash only in Java source code to escape the first \

Just like in Java, \ is the escape character in regexes.