A regular expression is an object that describes a pattern of characters.
You can use regular expressions to do search and replace functions on text.
/pattern/modifiers;
Modifiers are used to perform case-insensitive and global searches:
| Modifier | Description |
|---|---|
| i | Perform case-insensitive matching |
| g | Perform a global match (find all matches rather than stopping after the first match) |
| m | Perform multiline matching |
Brackets are used to find a range of characters:
| Expression | Description |
|---|---|
| [abc] | Find any character between the brackets |
| [^abc] | Find any character NOT between the brackets |
| [0-9] | Find any character between the brackets (any digit) |
| [^0-9] | Find any character NOT between the brackets (any non-digit) |
| (x|y) | Find any of the alternatives specified |
Metacharacters are characters with a special meaning:
| Metacharacter | Description |
|---|---|
| . | Find a single character, except newline or line terminator |
| \w | Find a word character |
| \W | Find a non-word character |
| \d | Find a digit |
| \D | Find a non-digit character |
| \s | Find a whitespace character |
| \S | Find a non-whitespace character |
| \b | Find a match at the beginning/end of a word |
| \B | Find a match not at the beginning/end of a word |
| \0 | Find a NUL character |
| \n | Find a new line character |
| \f | Find a form feed character |
| \r | Find a carriage return character |
| \t | Find a tab character |
| \v | Find a vertical tab character |
| \xxx | Find the character specified by an octal number xxx |
| \xdd | Find the character specified by a hexadecimal number dd |
| \uxxxx | Find the Unicode character specified by a hexadecimal number xxxx |
| Quantifier | Description |
|---|---|
| n+ | Matches any string that contains at least one n |
| n* | Matches any string that contains zero or more occurrences of n |
| n? | Matches any string that contains zero or one occurrences of n |
| n{X} | Matches any string that contains a sequence of X n's |
| n{X,Y} | Matches any string that contains a sequence of X to Y n's |
| n{X,} | Matches any string that contains a sequence of at least X n's |
| n$ | Matches any string with n at the end of it |
| ^n | Matches any string with n at the beginning of it |
| ?=n | Matches any string that is followed by a specific string n |
| ?!n | Matches any string that is not followed by a specific string n |