Java string question

Tar.Aldarion

I was jsut trying to find the last occurrence of a period in a string, and returning the substring after this period. I was thinking of using lastIndexOf, which would be simplest? That works fine but if there is no period in the string it returns the whole string. What is the best way to check if there is no occurrence of a period in the string? I have:

if(str.matches(".*\\..*"))

That seems a bit much, shouldn't lastIndexOf just be returning -1 and not the whole string if it doesn't find an instance of period?
The same thing happens with String.Split. So please tell me why I am stupid!

CreepingDeath

I'd write a little utility method like this

    public static String afterDot(String str)
    {
        int lastDot = str.lastIndexOf('.');
        return ( lastDot!=-1 ? str.substring(lastDot+1) : "" );
    }

Tar.Aldarion

That's great thanks.