Regular Expression Syntax

Regular expressions or regex are sequences of characters that define a pattern.

There are three types of regular expressions: regex (OS_Regex), sregex (OS_Match) and PCRE2.

Regex (OS_Regex) syntax

This is a fast and simple library for regular expressions in C.

This library is designed to be simple while still supporting the most common regular expressions.

Supported expressions

Expressions

Valid characters

\w

A-Z, a-z, 0-9, '-', '@', '_' characters

\d

0-9 character

\s

Spaces " "

\t

Tabs

\p

()*+,-.:;<=>?[]!"'#$%&|{}

\W

Anything not \w

\D

Anything not \d

\S

Anything not \s

\.

Anything

Modifiers

Expressions

Actions

+

To match one or more times

*

To match zero or more times

Special characters

Expressions

Actions

^

To specify the beginning of the text

$

To specify the end of the text

|

To create a logical or between multiple patterns

Characters escaping

To utilize the following characters they must be escaped with: \

$

(

)

\

|

<

\$

\(

\)

\ \

\|

\<

Limitations

  • The * and + modifiers can only be applied to backslash expressions, not bare characters (e.g. \d+ is supported, 0+ is not)

  • You cannot use alternation in a group, e.g. (foo|bar) is not permitted

  • Complex backtracking is not supported, e.g. \p*\d*\s*\w*: does not match a single colon, because \p* consumes the colon

  • . matches a literal dot, whereas \. matches any character

  • \s matches only an ASCII space (32), not other whitespace like tab

  • there is no syntax to match a literal caret, asterisk or plus (although \p will match asterisk or plus, along with some other characters)

Sregex (OS_Match) syntax

This is faster than OS_Regex, but only supports simple string matching and the following special characters.

Special characters

Expressions

Actions

^

To specify the beginning of the text

$

To specify the end of the text

|

To create a logic: or, between multiple patterns

!

To negate the expression

PCRE2 syntax

Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) tries to match Perl syntax and semantics as closely as it can.

It provides features like recursive patterns, look-ahead and look-behind assertions, non-capturing groups, non-greedy quantifiers, extended syntax for characters and character classes, and many other. For more details, please refer to the PCRE Syntax documentation.

Supported expressions

Expressions

Actions

.

Any character except newline

\d

Any decimal digit, equal to [0-9]

\D

Any character that is not a decimal digit, equal to [^0-9]

\h

Any horizontal white space character

\H

Any character that is not a horizontal white space character

\s

Any white space character, equal to [\t\r\n\f]

\S

Any character that is not a white space character, equal to [^\t\r\n\f]

\w

Any "word" character

\W

Any "non-word" character

Characters escaping

Expressions

Actions

\f

Form feed (hex 0C)

\n

Newline (hex 0A)

\r

Carriage return (hex 0D)

\t

Tab (hex 09)

\0dd

Character with octal code 0dd

\o{ddd..}

Character with octal code ddd..

\xhh

Character with hex code hh

\x{hh..}

Character with hex code hh..

Quantifiers

Expressions

Actions

?

0 or 1, greedy

?+

0 or 1, possessive

??

0 or 1, lazy

*

0 or more, greedy

*+

0 or more, possessive

*?

0 or more, lazy

+

1 or more, greedy

++

1 or more, possessive

+?

1 or more, lazy

{n}

Exactly n

{n,m}

At least n, no more than m, greedy

{n,m}+

At least n, no more than m, possessive

{n,m}?

At least n, no more than m, lazy

{n,}

n or more, greedy

{n,}+

n or more, possessive

{n,}?

n or more, lazy