In a regular expression, special characters interpreted are:
. |
Matches any character |
\( |
This marks the start of a region for tagging a match. |
\) |
This marks the end of a tagged region. |
\n |
Where n is 1 through 9 refers to the first through ninth tagged region when replacing. For example, if the search string was Fred\([1-9]\)XXX and the replace string was Sam\1YYY, when
applied to Fred2XXX this would generate Sam2YYY. |
\< |
This matches the start of a word. |
| \> |
This matches the end of a word. |
\ |
This allows you to use a character that would otherwise have a special meaning. For example, \[ would be interpreted as [ and not as the start of a character set. |
[...] |
This indicates a set of characters, for example, [abc] means any of the characters a, b or c. You can also use ranges, for example [a-z] for any lower case character. |
[^...] |
The complement of the characters in the set. For example, [^A-Za-z] means any character except an alphabetic character. |
^ |
This matches the start of a line (unless used inside a set, see above). |
$ |
This matches the end of a line. |
* |
This matches 0 or more times. For example, Sa*m matches Sm, Sam, Saam, Saaam and so on. |
+ |
This matches 1 or more times. For example, Sa+m matches Sam, Saam, Saaam and so on. |
5.5.3.10.1. Regular expression syntax 
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5. 