Regex in Java – Match anything, except '*' character

Okay, so I’m trying to create a regex, that will ensure these 2 things:

1. String contains two ‘*’
2. String ends with 3 digits

I’ve made something, which kind of works, but it does not ensure that there are only 2 *, since in these spaces between the *, it can happen that there is another *:

Pattern.compile(".*\\*.*\\*[0-9]{3}", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);

So, these .* can be anything, any amount of characters, words and so on except * because I need to ensure that there are only 2 ‘*’.

How could I do it?

>Solution :

[^*] matches anything but the * character so you could do

^(?:[^*]*\*){2}[^*]*\d{3}$

• ^ – start of line anchor
• (?: – start of non-capturing group
  • [^*]* – match zero or more non * characters
  • \* – match on a *
• ) – end of non-capturing group
• {2} – repeat this twice
• [^*]* – matching only on non * characters
• \d{3} – end with 3 digits
• $ – end of line anchor

Demo

In a comment you added the constraint that it should end with * followed by 3 digits. That could be done by removing [^*]* after {2}

^(?:[^*]*\*){2}\d{3}$

Demo