Extended Regular Expressions
- `.` matches any single character.
- A character class `[...]` matches any character within the brackets. For example, `[abc]` matches `a`, `b`, or `c`. To name a range of characters, use a dash. `[a-z]` matches any lowercase letter, whereas `[0-9]` matches any digit.
- `*` matches zero or more instances of the thing preceding it. For example, `x*` matches any number of `x` characters, `[0-9]*` matches any number of digits, and `.*` matches any number of anything.
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The pattern matches if it occurs anywhere in the value being tested.
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To anchor a pattern so that it must match the beginning or end of the value being tested, use `^` at the beginning or `$` at the end of the pattern.
Bill Christmas
Last modified: Tue Jul 1 11:10:10 BST 2003