java.util.Scanner

[Dillinger4]

I started taking a look at some of the new classes in Java5 but i am a bit confused on how a Scanner uses delimiters. For instance take the following block of code.

 String input = "1 fish 2 fish red fish blue fish";
 Scanner s = new Scanner(input).useDelimiter("\\s*fish\\s*");
 System.out.println(s.nextInt());
 System.out.println(s.nextInt());
 System.out.println(s.next());
 System.out.println(s.next());
 s.close();

What is the "\\s*" used for? If the delimiter was
specified as useDelimiter("fish"); wouldn't the output
still be the same?