| Regular Expression | Explanation |
|---|---|
| .*AbC.* | matches data containg the phrase "AbC" |
| [Mm]y [Nn]ame | matches data containg the phrase "My Name" independet of upper or lower case notation |
| Operator Type | Examples | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Literal Characters Match a character exactly |
a A y 6 % @ | Letters, digits and many special characters match exactly |
| \$ \^ \+ \\ \? | Precede other special characters with a \ to cancel their regex special meaning |
|
| \n \t \r | Literal new line, tab, return | |
| \cJ \cG | Control codes | |
| \xa3 | Hex codes for any character | |
| Anchors and assertions | ^ | Starts with | $ | Ends with | \b \B | on a word boundary, NOT on a word boundary |
| Character groups any 1 character from the group |
[aAeEiou] | any character listed from [ to ] |
| [^aAeEiou] | any character except aAeEio or u | |
| [a-fA-F0-9] | any hex character (0 to 9 or a to f) | |
| . | any character at all (not new line in some circumstances) |
|
| \s | any space character (space \n \r or \t) | |
| \w | any word character (letter digit or _) | |
| \d | any digit (0 through 9) | |
| \S \W \D | any character that is NOT a space word character or digit |
|
| Counts apply to previous element |
+ | 1 or more ("some") |
| * | 0 or more ("perhaps some") | |
| ? | 0 or 1 ("perhaps a") | |
| {4} | exactly 4 | |
| {4,} | 4 or more | |
| {4,8} | between 4 and 8 | |
| Add a ? after any count to turn it sparse (match as few as possible) rather than have it default to greedy | ||
| Alternation | | | either, or |
| Grouping | ( ) | group for count and save to variable |
| (?: ) | group for count but do not save | |
| Variables | $xyz | Insert contents of $xyz into regular expression |
| \1 \2 | Back reference to 1st, 2nd etc matched groups | |