Need regular expression that will work to find numeric and alpha characters in a string -

here's i'm trying do. user can type in search string, can include '*' or '?' wildcard characters. i'm finding works regular strings not ones including numeric characters.

e.g: 414d512052524d2e535441524b2e4e45298b8751202ae908 1208

if section of hex string, returns false. if "120" or "208" in "1208" string fails.

right now, regular expression pattern ends looking when user enters, "w?f": '\bw.?f\b'

i'm (obviously) not well-versed in regular expressions @ moment, appreciate pointers may have handle numeric characters in way need - thanks!

code in question:

 /**  *  * @param searchstring  * @param strtobesearched  * @return  */ public boolean findstring(string searchstring, string strtobesearched) {     pattern pattern = pattern.compile(wildcardtoregex(searchstring));     return pattern.matcher(strtobesearched).find(); }  private string wildcardtoregex(string wildcard){     stringbuffer s = new stringbuffer(wildcard.length());     s.append("\\b");     (int = 0, = wildcard.length(); < is; i++) {         char c = wildcard.charat(i);         switch(c) {         case '*':             s.append(".*");             break;         case '?':             s.append(".?");             break;         default:             s.append(c);             break;         }     }     s.append("\\b");     return(s.tostring()); } 

let's assume string search in is

1208 

the search "term" user enters is

120 

the pattern is

\b120\b 

the \b (word boundary) meta-character matches beginning , end of "words".
in our example, can't work because 120 != 1208

the pattern has be

\b.*120.*\b 

where .* means match variable number of characters (including null).

solution:

• either add .*s wildcardtoregex(...) method make functionality work out-of-the-box,
• or tell users search *120*, because * wildcard character same.
  is, in fact, preference because user can define whether search entries starting (search something*), including (*something*), ending (*something), or (something).