May 17th, 2013 at 12:16 PM

Special Character Definitions for Regular Expression

Quote the next metacharacter ^ Match the beginning of the line . Match any character (except newline) $ Match the end of the line (or before newline at the end) | Alternation () Grouping [] Character class * Match 0 or more times + Match 1 or more times ? Match 1 or 0 times {n} Match exactly n times {n,} Match at least n times {n,m} Match at least n but not more than m times More Special Character Stuff tab (HT, TAB) newline (LF, NL) return (CR) f form feed (FF) a alarm (bell) (BEL) e escape (think troff) (ESC) 33 octal char (think of a PDP-11) x1B hex char c control char l lowercase next char (think vi) u uppercase next char (think vi) L lowercase till E (think vi) U uppercase till E (think vi) E end case modification (think vi) Q quote (disable) pattern metacharacters till E Even More Special Characters w Match a "word" character (alphanumeric plus "_") W Match a non-word character s Match a whitespace character S Match a non-whitespace character d Match a digit character D Match a non-digit character  Match a word boundary B Match a non-(word boundary) A Match only at beginning of string  Match only at end of string, or before newline at the end z Match only at end of string G Match only where previous m//g left off (works only with /g)