Another possibility is to turn the list of domain names into a regular expression. For example, something along the lines of String validDomainNames = " www.doo.com,*foo.com,*.foo.com,www.foo.com, www.fo.com, *.fo.com"; String validDomainNameRegex = validDomainNames.replaceAll("\\s+", ""); validDomainNameRegex = validDomainNameRegex.replaceAll(",", "|"); validDomainNameRegex = validDomainNameRegex.replaceAll("\\.", "\\\\."); validDomainNameRegex = validDomainNameRegex.replaceAll("\\*", "[0-9a-zA-Z]+"); Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(validDomainNameRegex); System.out.println(validDomainNameRegex); String[] goodValues = { "www.foo.com", "www1.foo.com", "wwwfoo.com", }; for (String value ...