Purpose
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New
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Example
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Match any single character (except a line break)
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.
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a.o matches "aro" in "around" and "abo" in "about" but not "acro" in "across".
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Match zero or more occurrences of the preceding expression (match as many characters as possible)
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*
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a*r matches "r" in "rack", "ar" in "ark", and "aar" in "aardvark"
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Match any character zero or more times (Wildcard *)
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.*
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c.*e matches “cke” in “racket”, “comme” in “comment”, and “code” in “code”
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Match one or more occurrences of the preceding expression (match as many characters as possible)
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+
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e.+e matches "eede" in "feeder" but not "ee".
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Match any character one or more times (Wildcard ?)
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.+
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e.+e matches "eede" in "feeder" but not "ee".
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Match zero or more occurrences of the preceding expression (match as few characters as possible)
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*?
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e.*?e matches "ee" in "feeder" but not "eede".
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Match one or more occurrences of the preceding expression (match as few characters as possible)
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+?
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e.+?e matches "ente" and "erprise" in "enterprise", but not the whole word "enterprise".
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Anchor the match string to the beginning of a line or string
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^
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^car matches the word "car" only when it appears at the beginning of a line.
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Anchor the match string to the end of a line
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\r?$
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End\r?$ matches "end" only when it appears at the end of a line. <objectUI\r?$ founds all <objectUI followed by new line.
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Match any single character in a set
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[abc]
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b[abc] matches "ba", "bb", and "bc".
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Match any character in a range of characters
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[a-f]
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be[n-t] matches "bet" in "between", "ben" in "beneath", and "bes" in "beside", but not "below".
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Capture and implicitly number the expression contained within parenthesis
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()
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([a-z])X\1 matches "aXa"and "bXb", but not "aXb". ". “\1” refers to the first expression group “[a-z]”.
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Invalidate a match
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(?!abc)
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real (?!ity) matches "real" in "realty" and "really" but not in "reality." It also finds the second "real" (but not the first "real") in "realityreal".
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Match any character that is not in a given set of characters
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[^abc]
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be[^n-t] matches "bef" in "before", "beh" in "behind", and "bel" in "below", but not "beneath".
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Match either the expression before or the one after the symbol.
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|
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(sponge|mud) bath matches "sponge bath" and "mud bath."
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Escape the character following the backslash
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\
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\^ matches the character ^.
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Specify the number of occurrences of the preceding character or group
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{x}, where x is the number of occurrences
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x(ab){2}x matches "xababx", and x(ab){2,3}x matches "xababx" and "xabababx" but not "xababababx".
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Match text in a Unicode character class, where “X” is the Unicode number. For more information about Unicode character classes, see
Unicode Standard 5.2 Character Properties.
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\p{X}
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\p{Lu} matches "T" and "D" in "Thomas Doe".
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Match a word boundary
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\b (Outside a character class \b specifies a word boundary, and inside a character class specifies a backspace).
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\bin matches "in" in "inside" but not "pinto".
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Match a line break (ie a carriage return followed by a new line).
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\r?\n
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End\r?\nBegin matches "End" and "Begin" only when "End" is the last string in a line and "Begin" is the first string in the next line.
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Match any alphanumeric character
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\w
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a\wd matches "add" and "a1d" but not "a d".
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Match any whitespace character.
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(?([^\r\n])\s)
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Public\sInterface matches the phrase "Public Interface".
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Match any numeric character
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\d
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\d matches and "3" in "3456", "2" in 23", and "1" in "1".
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Match a Unicode character
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\uXXXX where XXXX specifies the Unicode character value.
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\u0065 matches the character "e".
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Match an identifier
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\b(_\w+|[\w-[0-9_]]\w*)\b
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Matches "type1" but not &type1" or "#define".
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Match a string inside quotes
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((\".+?\")|('.+?'))
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Matches any string inside single or double quotes.
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Match a hexadecimal number
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\b0[xX]([0-9a-fA-F])\b
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Matches "0xc67f" but not "0xc67fc67f".
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Match integers and decimals
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\b[0-9]*\.*[0-9]+\b
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Matches "1.333".
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