Java URL counter is not working

Question

I'm trying to count the number of URLs in any given Java string:

String test = "Hello World!";
String urlRegex = "<\\b(https?|ftp|file)://[-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]>";
pattern = Pattern.compile(urlRegex);
matcher = pattern.matcher(test);
numUrls = matcher.groupCount();
System.err.println("numUrls = " + numUrls);

I am surprised to see that numUrls is not zero. Any ideas as to why? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

From the javadoc for Matcher#groupCount()

Returns the number of capturing groups in this matcher's pattern.

Your pattern has one group ...(https?|ftp|file)... so it returns 1.