What is a word boundary in regex?

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I’m trying to use regexes to match space-separated numbers.
I can’t find a precise definition of \b (“word boundary”).
I had assumed that -12 would be an “integer word” (matched by \b\-?\d+\b) but it appears that this does not work. I’d be grateful to know of ways of .

[I am using Java regexes in Java 1.6]

Example:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\s*\\b\\-?\\d+\\s*");
String plus = " 12 ";
System.out.println(""+pattern.matcher(plus).matches());

String minus = " -12 ";
System.out.println(""+pattern.matcher(minus).matches());

pattern = Pattern.compile("\\s*\\-?\\d+\\s*");
System.out.println(""+pattern.matcher(minus).matches());

This returns:

true
false
true

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