.

Any single character, including white space

'..ain' matches sequences of five consecutive characters that end with 'ain'.

[c1c2c3]

Any character contained within the square brackets. The following characters are treated literally: $ | . * + ? and - when not used to indicate a range.

'[rp.]ain' matches 'rain' or 'pain' or '.ain'.

[^c1c2c3]

Any character not contained within the square brackets. The following characters are treated literally: $ | . * + ? and - when not used to indicate a range.

'[^*rp]ain' matches all four-letter sequences that end in 'ain', except 'rain' and 'pain' and '*ain'. For example, it matches 'gain', 'lain', or 'vain'.

[c₁-c₂]

Any character in the range of c₁ through c₂

'[A-G]' matches a single character in the range of A through G.

\w

Any alphabetic, numeric, or underscore character. For English character sets, \w is equivalent to [a-zA-Z_0-9]

'\w*' identifies a word comprised of any grouping of alphabetic, numeric, or underscore characters.

\W

Any character that is not alphabetic, numeric, or underscore. For English character sets, \W is equivalent to [^a-zA-Z_0-9]

'\W*' identifies a term that is not a word comprised of any grouping of alphabetic, numeric, or underscore characters.

\s

Any white-space character; equivalent to [ \f\n\r\t\v]

'\w*n\s' matches words that end with the letter n, followed by a white-space character.

\S

Any non-white-space character; equivalent to [^ \f\n\r\t\v]

'\d\S' matches a numeric digit followed by any non-white-space character.

\d

Any numeric digit; equivalent to [0-9]

'\d*' matches any number of consecutive digits.

\D

Any nondigit character; equivalent to [^0-9]

'\w*\D\>' matches words that do not end with a numeric digit.

\oN or \o{N}

Character of octal value N

'\o{40}' matches the space character, defined by octal 40.

\xN or \x{N}

Character of hexadecimal value N

'\x2C' matches the comma character, defined by hex 2C.

\a

Alarm (beep)

\b

Backspace

\f

Form feed

\n

New line

\r

Carriage return

\t

Horizontal tab

\v

Vertical tab

\char

Any character with special meaning in regular expressions that you want to match literally (for example, use \\ to match a single backslash)

expr*

0 or more times consecutively.

'\w*' matches a word of any length.

expr?

0 times or 1 time.

'\w*(\.m)?' matches words that optionally end with the extension .m.

expr+

1 or more times consecutively.

'<img src="\w+\.gif">' matches an <img> HTML tag when the file name contains one or more characters.

expr{m,n}

At least m times, but no more than n times consecutively.

{0,1} is equivalent to ?.

'\S{4,8}' matches between four and eight non-white-space characters.

expr{m,}

At least m times consecutively.

{0,} and {1,} are equivalent to * and +, respectively.

'<a href="\w{1,}\.html">' matches an <a> HTML tag when the file name contains one or more characters.

expr{n}

Exactly n times consecutively.

Equivalent to {n,n}.

'\d{4}' matches four consecutive digits.

exprq

Greedy expression: match as many characters as possible.

Given the text '<tr><td><p>text</p></td>', the expression '</?t.*>' matches all characters between <tr and /td>:

'<tr><td><p>text</p></td>'

exprq?

Lazy expression: match as few characters as necessary.

Given the text'<tr><td><p>text</p></td>', the expression '</?t.*?>' ends each match at the first occurrence of the closing angle bracket (>):

'<tr>'   '<td>'   '</td>'

exprq+

Possessive expression: match as much as possible, but do not rescan any portions of the text.

Given the text'<tr><td><p>text</p></td>', the expression '</?t.*+>' does not return any matches, because the closing angle bracket is captured using .*, and is not rescanned.

(expr)

Group elements of the expression and capture tokens.

'Joh?n\s(\w*)' captures a token that contains the last name of any person with the first name John or Jon.

(?:expr)

Group, but do not capture tokens.

'(?:[aeiou][^aeiou]){2}' matches two consecutive patterns of a vowel followed by a nonvowel, such as 'anon'.

Without grouping, '[aeiou][^aeiou]{2}'matches a vowel followed by two nonvowels.

(?>expr)

Group atomically. Do not backtrack within the group to complete the match, and do not capture tokens.

'A(?>.*)Z' does not match 'AtoZ', although 'A(?:.*)Z' does. Using the atomic group, Z is captured using .* and is not rescanned.

(expr1|expr2)

Match expression expr1 or expression expr2.

If there is a match with expr1, then expr2 is ignored.

You can include ?: or ?> after the opening parenthesis to suppress tokens or group atomically.

'(let|tel)\w+' matches words that contain, but do not end, with let or tel.

^expr

Beginning of the input text.

'^M\w*' matches a word starting with M at the beginning of the text.

expr$

End of the input text.

'\w*m$' matches words ending with m at the end of the text.

\<expr

Beginning of a word.

'\<n\w*' matches any words starting with n.

expr\>

End of a word.

'\w*e\>' matches any words ending with e.

expr(?=test)

Look ahead for characters that match test.

'\w*(?=ing)' matches terms that are followed by ing, such as 'Fly' and 'fall' in the input text 'Flying, not falling.'

expr(?!test)

Look ahead for characters that do not match test.

'i(?!ng)' matches instances of the letter i that are not followed by ng.

(?<=test)expr

Look behind for characters that match test.

'(?<=re)\w*' matches terms that follow 're', such as 'new', 'use', and 'cycle' in the input text 'renew, reuse, recycle'

(?<!test)expr

Look behind for characters that do not match test.

'(?<!\d)(\d)(?!\d)' matches single-digit numbers (digits that do not precede or follow other digits).

(?=test)expr

Match both test and expr.

'(?=[a-z])[^aeiou]' matches consonants.

(?!test)expr

Match expr and do not match test.

'(?![aeiou])[a-z]' matches consonants.

expr1|expr2

Match expression expr1 or expression expr2.

If there is a match with expr1, then expr2 is ignored.

'(let|tel)\w+' matches words that start with let or tel.

(?(cond)expr)

If condition cond is true, then match expr.

'(?(?@ispc)[A-Z]:\\)' matches a drive name, such as C:\, when run on a Windows^® system.

(?(cond)expr1|expr2)

If condition cond is true, then match expr1. Otherwise, match expr2.

'Mr(s?)\..*?(?(1)her|his) \w*' matches text that includes her when the text begins with Mrs, or that includes his when the text begins with Mr.

(expr)

Capture in a token the characters that match the enclosed expression.

'Joh?n\s(\w*)' captures a token that contains the last name of any person with the first name John or Jon.

\N

Match the Nth token.

'<(\w+).*>.*</\1>' captures tokens for HTML tags, such as 'title' from the text '<title>Some text</title>'.

(?(N)expr1|expr2)

If the Nth token is found, then match expr1. Otherwise, match expr2.

'Mr(s?)\..*?(?(1)her|his) \w*' matches text that includes her when the text begins with Mrs, or that includes his when the text begins with Mr.

(?<name>expr)

Capture in a named token the characters that match the enclosed expression.

'(?<month>\d+)-(?<day>\d+)-(?<yr>\d+)' creates named tokens for the month, day, and year in an input date of the form mm-dd-yy.

\k<name>

Match the token referred to by name.

'<(?<tag>\w+).*>.*</\k<tag>>' captures tokens for HTML tags, such as 'title' from the text '<title>Some text</title>'.

(?(name)expr1|expr2)

If the named token is found, then match expr1. Otherwise, match expr2.

'Mr(?<sex>s?)\..*?(?(sex)her|his) \w*' matches text that includes her when the text begins with Mrs, or that includes his when the text begins with Mr.

(??expr)

Parse expr and include the resulting term in the match expression.

When parsed, expr must correspond to a complete, valid regular expression. Dynamic expressions that use the backslash escape character (\) require two backslashes: one for the initial parsing of expr, and one for the complete match.

'^(\d+)((??\\w{$1}))' determines how many characters to match by reading a digit at the beginning of the match. The dynamic expression is enclosed in a second set of parentheses so that the resulting match is captured in a token. For instance, matching '5XXXXX' captures tokens for '5' and 'XXXXX'.

(??@cmd)

Execute the MATLAB command represented by cmd, and include the output returned by the command in the match expression.

'(.{2,}).?(??@fliplr($1))' finds palindromes that are at least four characters long, such as 'abba'.

(?@cmd)

Execute the MATLAB command represented by cmd, but discard any output the command returns. (Helpful for diagnosing regular expressions.)

'\w*?(\w)(?@disp($1))\1\w*' matches words that include double letters (such as pp), and displays intermediate results.

$& or $0

Portion of the input text that is currently a match

$`

Portion of the input text that precedes the current match

$'

Portion of the input text that follows the current match (use $'' to represent $')

$N

Nth token

$<name>

Named token

${cmd}

Output returned when MATLAB executes the command, cmd

Insert a comment in the regular expression. The comment text is ignored when matching the input.

'(?# Initial digit)\<\d\w+' includes a comment, and matches words that begin with a number.

Match letter case (default for regexp and regexprep).

Do not match letter case (default for regexpi).

Match dot (.) in the pattern with any character (default).

Match dot in the pattern with any character that is not a newline character.

Match the ^ and $ metacharacters at the beginning and end of text (default).

Match the ^ and $ metacharacters at the beginning and end of a line.

Include space characters and comments when matching (default).

Ignore space characters and comments when matching. Use '\ ' and '\#' to match space and # characters.