I am trying to use a simple split to break up the following string: 00-00000 My expression is: ^([0-9][0-9])(-)([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9]) And my usage is: String s = "00-00000"; String pattern = "^([0-9][0-9])(-)([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])([0-9])"; String[] parts = s.split(pattern); If I play around with the Pattern and Matcher classes I can see that my pattern does match and the matcher tells me my groupCount is 7 which is correct. But when I try and split them I have no luck.