Regular Expression Cheatsheet

Here’s a quick cheatsheet of the metacharacters used in regular expressions.

MetacharacterNameMatches
.dotany one character
[ ... ]character classany character listed
[^...]negated character classany character not listed
^caretthe position at the start of the line
$dollarthe position at the end of the line
\<backslash less-thanthe position at the start of the word
\>backslash greater-thanthe position at the end of the word
|or, barmatches either expression it separates
( ... )parenthesesused to limit scope of |
?question markone allowed; none required ("one optional")
*asteriskunlimited allowed; none required ("any amount OK")
+plusunlimited allowed; one required ("at least one")
\1, \2, ...back referencematches text previously matched within first, second, etc., set of parentheses
\backslashescape a metacharacter to match literally
{ ... }bracesInterval; counting quantifier; specify number of matches