Regular Expression Metacharacters
| Character | outside of sets | [inside sets] | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | ✓ | ✓ | Match a BELL, u0007 |
| A | ✓ | Match at the beginning of the input. Differs from ^ in that A will not match after a new line within the input. | |
| ✓ | Match if the current position is a word boundary. Boundaries occur at the transitions between word (w) and non-word (W) characters, with combining marks ignored. For better word boundaries, see ICU Boundary Analysis . | ||
| B | ✓ | Match if the current position is not a word boundary. | |
| cX | ✓ | ✓ | Match a control-X character. |
| d | ✓ | ✓ | Match any character with the Unicode General Category of Nd (Number, Decimal Digit.) |
| D | ✓ | ✓ | Match any character that is not a decimal digit. |
| e | ✓ | ✓ | Match an ESCAPE, u001B. |
| E | ✓ | ✓ | Terminates a Q ... E quoted sequence. |
| f | ✓ | ✓ | Match a FORM FEED, u000C. |
| G | ✓ | Match if the current position is at the end of the previous match. | |
| ✓ | ✓ | Match a LINE FEED, u000A. | |
| N{UNICODE CHARACTER NAME} | ✓ | ✓ | Match the named character. |
| p{UNICODE PROPERTY NAME} | ✓ | ✓ | Match any character with the specified Unicode Property. |
| P{UNICODE PROPERTY NAME} | ✓ | ✓ | Match any character not having the specified Unicode Property. |
| Q | ✓ | ✓ | Quotes all following characters until E. |
| ✓ | ✓ | Match a CARRIAGE RETURN, u000D. | |
| s | ✓ | ✓ | Match a white space character. White space is defined as [ f p{Z}]. |
| S | ✓ | ✓ | Match a non-white space character. |
| ✓ | ✓ | Match a HORIZONTAL TABULATION, u0009. | |
| uhhhh | ✓ | ✓ | Match the character with the hex value hhhh. |
| Uhhhhhhhh | ✓ | ✓ | Match the character with the hex value hhhhhhhh. Exactly eight hex digits must be provided, even though the largest Unicode code point is U0010ffff. |
| w | ✓ | ✓ | Match a word character. Word characters are [p{Alphabetic}p{Mark}p{Decimal_Number}p{Connector_Punctuation}u200cu200d]. |
| W | ✓ | ✓ | Match a non-word character. |
| x{hhhh} | ✓ | ✓ | Match the character with hex value hhhh. From one to six hex digits may be supplied. |
| xhh | ✓ | ✓ | Match the character with two digit hex value hh |
| X | ✓ | Match a Grapheme Cluster . | |
| ✓ | Match if the current position is at the end of input, but before the final line terminator, if one exists. | ||
| z | ✓ | Match if the current position is at the end of input. | |
| n | ✓ | Back Reference. Match whatever the nth capturing group matched. n must be a number > 1 and < total number of capture groups in the pattern. | |