Talk:Regular expression examples/sandbox

Trying to come up with a language-independent version of this article...

Metacharacter(s)	Description	Example
		string	regex	match	notes
.	Normally matches any character except a newline. Within square brackets the dot is literal	Hello World	......	Hello,
( )	Groups a series of pattern elements to a single element.	Hello World	(H..).(o..)	Hello W Group 1: Hel Group 2: o W
?	Matches the preceding pattern element zero or one times.	Hello World	H(.?)e	He Group 1: «empty»	There is a possible character (no, in this case) between 'H' and 'e'.
+	Matches the preceding pattern element one or more times.	Hello World	l+	ll	There are one or more consecutive letter "l"'s in "Hello World"
*	Matches the preceding pattern element zero or more times.	Hello World	el*o	ello	There is an 'e' followed by zero to many 'l' followed by 'o' (eo, elo, ello, elllo)
{M,N}	Denotes the minimum M and the maximum N match count.	Hello World	l{1,2}	ll	There exists a substring with at least 1 and at most 2 l's
?	Modifies the *, +, or {M,N}'d regexp that comes before to match as few times as possible.	Hello World	l+?	l	Compare this (called the non-greedy match) with the greedier version above with the unmodified '+'.
[...]	Denotes a set of possible character matches.	Hello World	[aeiou]+	e	Matches the first occurrence of a succession of vowels (one or more).
[^...]	Matches every character except the ones inside brackets.	Hello World	[^aeiou]+	H	Matches the first occurrence of a succession of 'not-vowels'
	Separates alternate possibilities.	Hello World	Hi|Pogo)	Hello	At least one of Hello, Hi, or Pogo is contained in the string.
\b	Matches a word boundary	Hello World	ell\b	matches nothing	There is no substring matching 'ell' at the end of a word
\w	Matches a 'word' character (defined as the group of alphanumeric characters, including the underscore "_"; same as [A-Za-z0-9_])	Hello World	\w	H	There is at least one alphanumeric character in string (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _)
\W	Matches a non-alphanumeric character, excluding "_"; same as [^A-Za-z0-9_]	Hello World	\W	«space»	The space between Hello and World is not alphanumeric
\s	Matches a whitespace character (space, tab, newline, form feed)	Hello World	\s.*	World	Any characters (0 or more) after a whitespace character
\S	Matches anything BUT a whitespace.	Hello World	\S.*\S	Hello World	There are TWO non-whitespace characters, which may be separated by other characters
\d	Matches a digit; same as [0-9].	99 bottles of beer on the wall	(\d+)	Group 1: 99	Group 1 is the first number in the string
\D	Matches a non-digit; same as [^0-9].	99 bottles of beer on the wall	\D	«space»	The first non-digit character is the space after 99
^	Matches the beginning of a line or string.	Hello World	^He	He	The string starts with the characters 'He'
$	Matches the end of a line or string.	Hello World	rld$	rld	The given string is a line or string that ends with 'rld'
\A	Matches the beginning of a string (but not an internal line).	Hello\nWorld	\AH	H	The matched string starts with 'H'
\z	Matches the end of a string (but not an internal line).	Hello\nWorld\n	d\n\z	d\n	The matched string is a string that ends with 'd\\n'