Regular Expression which matches space or nothing

Question

I have JTextPane which colors "int" words blue. Such regexp is wrong because it will also color "print":

int + "(\\[\\])*" //To match eg. int[]

So I came on idea with such regexp:

"\\s" + int + "(\\[\\])*"

Its okay but doesnt work if user types int as first in text pane. How to solve this problem? Is there some symbol for NOTHING? So i could make: \s | NOTHING

Answer 1

Just match int surrounded by word boundaries, which are matched by \b. The pattern:

"\\bint\\b"

More reading over at the always-excellent regular-expressions.info.

Answer 2

Do you want an optional space? That would be \\s?. Or to allow zero or more spaces: \\s*.