What would the regex be to see if any of the words in a list exist in a line of text?

Possibly:

Raw Match Pattern:
\b(?:the|at|are|is|will)\b
 
Java Code Example:
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
class Module1{
  public static void main(String[] asd){
  String sourcestring = "this is the test";
  Pattern re = Pattern.compile("\\b(?:the|at|are|is|will)\\b");
  Matcher m = re.matcher(sourcestring);
    while (m.find()){
      for( int groupIdx = 0; groupIdx < m.groupCount(); groupIdx++ ){
        System.out.println( "[" + groupIdx + "] = " + m.group(groupIdx) );
      }
    }
  }
}
 
$matches Array:
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => is
            [1] => the
        )
 
)

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ddrudik,
Is it safe to assume that the raw match pattern will work with String.matches() ?

Thanks,
Rick

also is that pattern case insensitive?

No, the raw match pattern is not formatted properly for use in Java code, see the code example for the formatting as it should be (at least how I understand it should be).

ok... what I need to be able to do is this

function boolean lineTest(String line)
{
     return ((line.substring(3) == "CHK") && (line.matches("someregex") == false));
}

I need some regex I can place into the line.matches statement that will return true if any of the words in the regex match, and it needs to be case insensitive matching because line can be upper or lower case, or contain any combination of upper or lower case.

To use .matches I would recommend you try the pattern:
"^.*\\b(?:the|at|are|is|will)\\b.*$"

you could leave the ^ and $ off of the pattern since with .matches it is assumed:
".*\\b(?:the|at|are|is|will)\\b.*"

As for case-insensitive matching you cannot specify that with .matches, you will need to convert "line" to lowercase before sending to .matches.

Thanks!

Thanks for the question and the points.