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Created February 20, 2019 20:25
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Regex Cheat Sheet

Regular Expressions

Basic Syntax

  • /.../: Start and end regex delimiters
  • |: Alternation
  • (): Grouping

Position Matching

  • ^: Start of string or start of line in multi-line mode
  • \A: Start of string
  • $: End of string or end of line in multi-line mode
  • \Z: End of string
  • \b: Word boundary
  • \B: Not word boundary
  • \<: Start of word
  • \>: End of word

Character Classes

  • \s: Whitespace
  • \S: Not whitespace
  • \w: Word
  • \W: Not word
  • \d: Digit
  • \D: Not digit
  • \x: Hexade­cimal digit
  • \O: Octal digit

Special Characters

  • \n: Newline
  • \r: Carriage return
  • \t: Tab
  • \v: Vertical tab
  • \f: Form feed
  • \xxx: Octal character xxx
  • \xhh: Hex character hh

Groups and Ranges

  • .: Any character except newline (\n)
  • (a|b): a or b
  • (…): Group
  • (?:…): Passive (non-c­apt­uring) group
  • [abc]: a, b or c
  • [^abc]: Not a, b or c
  • [a-z]: Letters from a to z
  • [A-Z]: Uppercase letters from A to Z
  • [0-9]: Digits from 0 to 9

Note: Ranges are inclusive.

Quantifiers

  • *: 0 or more
  • +: 1 or more
  • ?: 0 or 1
  • {3: Exactly 3
  • {3,}: 3 or more
  • {3,5}: 3, 4 or 5

Note: Quantifiers are greedy - they match as many times as possible. Add a ? after the quantifier to make it ungreedy.

Escape Sequences

  • \:Escape following character. Used to escape any of the following metacharacters: {}^$.|*+?.
  • \Q: Begin literal sequence
  • \E: End literal sequence

String Replacement

  • $1: 1st group
  • $2: 2nd group
  • $n: nth group
  • `$``: Before matched string
  • $': After matched string
  • $+: Last matched string
  • $&: Entire matched string

Note: Some regex implem­ent­ations use \ instead of $.

Assertions

  • ?=: Lookahead assertion
  • ?!: Negative lookahead
  • ?<=: Lookbehind assertion
  • ?!=, ?<!: Negative lookbehind
  • ?>: Once-only subexp­ression
  • ?(): Condition if-then
  • ?()|: Condition if-then-else
  • ?#: Comment

POSIX

  • [:upper:]: Uppercase letters
  • [:lower:]: Lowercase letters
  • [:alpha:]: All letters
  • [:alnum:]: Digits and letters
  • [:digit:]: Digits
  • [:xdigit:]: Hexade­cimal digits
  • [:punct:]: Punctu­ation
  • [:blank:]: Space and tab
  • [:space:]: Blank characters
  • [:cntrl:]: Control characters
  • [:graph:]: Printed characters
  • [:print:]: Printed characters and spaces
  • [:word:]: Digits, letters and underscore

Pattern Modifiers

  • g: Global match
  • i: Case-i­nse­nsitive
  • m: Multi-line mode. Causes ^ and $ to also match the start/end of lines.
  • s: Single-line mode. Causes . to match all, including line breaks.
  • x: Allow comments and whitespace in pattern
  • e: Evaluate replac­ement
  • U: Ungreedy mode
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