Thread: Regex definition unclear...

I've read the documentation. It's still unclear. I've searched this forum. No luck. So would someone kindly explain in simple terms why the asterisk ("zero or any occurrences") is necessary - as described in the comments above the expression. Just guessing: the asterisk is the "thereafter" part? But how do we arrive at that from the "zero or any occurrences" described in the Pattern documentation?

Here's the example:

 
// This method verifies that firstName starts with an uppercase
// letter and contains lowercase letters thereafter.
 
public void setFirstName(String first)
{
    if (firstName.matches("[A-Z][a-z]*"))
    {
         this.firstName = first;
    } 
    // and blah blah blah...

After reading the documentation, it seems to me that the expression would say: "the first letter of firstName must be uppercase and the second letter is must be lowercase, zero or any number of times" (which of course doesn't make sense). The comments above tell me how the expression should be read, but I don't see the logic in that translation --- yet.

curmudgeon,

Thanks for a great explanation!

You're quite welcome!