title: Is there such a thing as a wildcard character in Java?
body: <p>I'm running a comparison program and at the minute it does a direct 'string-to-string' comparison and if they are an exact match it outputs that they are a match.</p>
  
  <p>Well, I was hoping to add an additional feature that allowed for 'similarity'...</p>
  
  <p>so for example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>String em1 = "52494646";
  String em2 = "52400646";
  
  
  if (em1.equals(em2)){
      output.writeUTF(dir + filenames[i]);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is sort of a snippet of the code. I'd like it so that it skips over the "00" and still recognises it as 'almost' the same number and still outputs it.</p>
  
  <p>I'd imagine it would look something like <code>String em2 = "524"+ ## +"646"</code> but thats obviously just a concept</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know if there is a way to have this kind of 'wildcard' (a term I've picked up from uni SQL) or if there is another way to do this similarity type deal.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks :)</p>