How to match letters only using java regex, matches method?

[A-Za-z ]* to match letters and spaces.

"[a-zA-Z]" matches only one character. To match multiple characters, use "[a-zA-Z]+".

Since a dot is a joker for any character, you have to mask it: "abc\." To make the dot optional, you need a question mark: "abc\.?"

If you write the Pattern as literal constant in your code, you have to mask the backslash:

System.out.println ("abc".matches ("abc\\.?"));
System.out.println ("abc.".matches ("abc\\.?"));
System.out.println ("abc..".matches ("abc\\.?"));

Combining both patterns:

System.out.println ("abc.".matches ("[a-zA-Z]+\\.?"));

Instead of a-zA-Z, \w is often more appropriate, since it captures foreign characters like äöüßø and so on:

System.out.println ("abc.".matches ("\\w+\\.?"));

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