Regex to check with starts with http://, https:// or ftp://

Question

I am framing a regex to check if a word starts with http:// or https:// or ftp://, my code is as follows,

     public static void main(String[] args) {     try{         String test = "http://yahoo.com";         System.out.println(test.matches("^(http|https|ftp)://"));     } finally{      } } 

It prints false. I also checked stackoverflow post Regex to test if string begins with http:// or https://

The regex seems to be right but why is it not matching?. I even tried ^(http|https|ftp)\:// and ^(http|https|ftp)\\://

Answer 1

You need a whole input match here.

System.out.println(test.matches("^(http|https|ftp)://.*$"));  

Edit:(Based on @davidchambers's comment)

System.out.println(test.matches("^(https?|ftp)://.*$"));  

Answer 2

Unless there is some compelling reason to use a regex, I would just use String.startsWith:

bool matches = test.startsWith("http://")             || test.startsWith("https://")              || test.startsWith("ftp://"); 

I wouldn't be surprised if this is faster, too.