This table lists the meta-characters understood by the WhatsUp Gold Regex Engine.
Meta-character |
Matches |
|
|
dot |
Matches any one character |
|
character class |
Matches any character inside the brackets. |
|
negated character class |
Matches any character except those inside the brackets. |
|
dash |
Used within a character class. Indicates a range of characters. |
|
escaped character |
Interpret the next character literally. |
|
binary character |
Match a single binary character. nn is a hexadecimal value between 00 and FF. |
Meta-character |
Matches |
|
|
question |
One optional. The preceding expression once or not at all. |
|
star |
Any number allowed, but are optional. |
|
plus |
One required, additional are optional. |
|
|
"Non-greedy" versions of ?, +, and *. Match as little as possible, whereas the "greedy" versions match as much as possible |
Meta-character |
Matches |
|
|
caret |
Matches the position at the start of the input. |
|
dollar |
At the end of a regular expression, this character matches the end of the input. |
Meta-character |
Matches |
|
|
alternation |
Matches either expression it separates. |
|
parentheses |
Provides grouping for quantifiers, limits scope of alternation via precedence. |
|
backreference |
Matches text previously matched within first, second, etc, match group (starting at 0). |
|
negation |
The expression following ! does not match the input |
Abbreviations are shorthand Meta-characters.
Abbreviation |
Matches |
|
Any alphanumeric character: ([a-zA-Z0-9]) |
|
White space (blank): ([ \\t]) |
|
Any alphabetic character: ([a-zA-Z]) |
|
Any decimal digit: [0-9] |
|
Any non decimal digit: [^0-9] |
|
Any hexadecimal digit: ([0-9a-fA-F]) |
|
Newline: (\r|(\r?\n)) |
|
Any punctuation character: ,./\';:"!?@#$%^&*()[]{}- _=+|<>!~ |
|
Any non-punctuation character |
|
A quoted string: (\"[^\"]*\")|(\'[^\']*\') |
|
WhatsUp Gold style white space character: [ \\t\\n\\r\\f\\v] |
|
WhatsUp Gold style non-white space character: |
|
Any word characters (letters and digits): ([a-zA-Z0-9_]) |
|
Non-word character: ([^a-zA-Z0-9_]) |
|
An integer: ([0-9]+) |