At http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/net/proxies.html, the property http.nonProxyHosts is described like:

"http.nonProxyHosts: a list of hosts that should be reached directly, bypassing the proxy. This is a list of regular expressions separated by '|'. Any host matching one of these regular expressions will be reached through a direct connection instead of through a proxy."

I got a bug filed on this, where the internal customer had issues with the regular expressions. It turns out that the "regular expressions" is actually just very simple patterns that may have a '*' either at the start or at the end.

This solved the issue for the customer, but they asked us to clarify the documentation. I suggest something like:

"http.nonProxyHosts: a list of hosts that should be reached directly, bypassing the proxy. This is a list of patterns separated by '|'. The patterns may start or end with a '*' for wildcards. Any host matching one of these patterns will be reached through a direct connection instead of through a proxy."