Java – Check if String contains only Alphabets

To check if String contains only alphabets in Java, call matches() method on the string object and pass the regular expression "[a-zA-Z]+" that matches only if the characters in the given string is alphabets (uppercase or lowercase).

String.matches() with argument as "[a-zA-Z]+" returns a boolean value of true if the String contains only alphabets, else it returns false.

The syntax to use a String.matches() to check if String contains only alphabets is

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String.matches("[a-zA-Z]+")

Example – Positive Scenario

In the following program, we will take a string and check if it contains only alphabets using String.matches() method.

Java Program

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public class Example {
	public static void main(String[] args){
		String str = "abcdABCD";
		boolean result = str.matches("[a-zA-Z]+");
		System.out.println("Original String : " + str);
		System.out.println("Does string contain only Alphabets? : " + result);
	}
}

Output

Original String : abcdABCD
Does string contain only Alphabets? : true

Example – Negative Scenario

In the following program, we will take a string containing some numbers and whitespace characters. When we check if this String contains only alphabets using String.matches() method, we should get false as return value.

Java Program

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public class Example {
	public static void main(String[] args){
		String str = "abcd ABCD 1234";
		boolean result = str.matches("[a-zA-Z]+");
		System.out.println("Original String : " + str);
		System.out.println("Does string contain only Alphabets? : " + result);
	}
}

Output

Original String : abcd ABCD 1234
Does string contain only Alphabets? : false

Conclusion

In this Java Tutorial, we learned how to check if given String contains only alphabets, using String.matches() method.