Template:LSL Regular Expressions

Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

Wildcard
.	Matches any character
Anchors
^	Matches the beginning of the string.
$	Matches the end of the string.
Expression Prefixes
(?i)	Makes search string case insensitive.	This must be the first thing that appears in the search string. "(?i)apple" will match "apple", "APPLE", "ApPlE", and any other combination of upper and lower case characters.
$	Matches the end of the string.
Repeats
*	Matches the preceding atom 0 or more times.
+	Matches the preceding atom 1 or more times.
?	Matches the preceding atom 0 or 1 times.
{n} {n,} {n, m}	Matches the preceding atom n, n or more, or between n and m times.
Sub-expressions
(expression)	Text enclosed in parentheses is a marked sub-expression. Text matched as part of a sub-expressions is split out and may be repeated.
Alternation
a | b	Match either a or b.
Character Sets
[abc]	Matches any one of the enumerated characters.
[a-c]	Matches any character in the specified range.
[^abc]	Matches any character other than the enumerated characters.
[[:name:]]	Matches any character of the named class.
	Any of the above character set definitions may be combined.
Escape Sequences
	Specific Characters
\e	ASCII 0x1B, ESC
\n	New line
\r	Carriage return
\t	Tab
\xdd	Matches an ASCII character with the code dd
	Single character classes
\d \D	Any decimal digit.	\d → [[:digit:]] or [0-9] \D → [^[:digit:]] or [^0-9]
\l \L	Any lower case character.	\l → [[:lower:]] or [a-z] \L → [^[:lower:]] or [^a-z]
\s \S	Any whitespace character.	\s → [[:space:]] or [ \t\r\n] \S → [^[:space:]] or [^ \t\r\n]
\u \U	Any upper case character.	\u → [[:upper:]] or [A-Z] \U → [^[:upper:]] or [^A-Z]
\w \W	Any "word" character. Alphanumeric plus underscore	\w → [[:upper:][:lower:][:digit:]_] or [A-Za-z0-9_] \W → [^[:upper:][:lower:][:digit:]_] or [^A-Za-z0-9_]
	Word boundaries
\<	Start of word.
\>	End of word
\b
\B	Not a word boundary.
*Note* LSL uses '\' as an escape character in strings. The escape characters above must be double escaped. So "\d" needs to be written in LSL as "\\d" Please see LSL Strings, Escape Codes
Named Character Classes
alnum	Any alpha-numeric character.	[[:alnum:]] → [0-9a-zA-Z] [^[:alnum:]] → [^0-9a-zA-Z]
alpha	Any alphabetic character.	[[:alpha:]] → [a-zA-Z] [^[:alpha:]] → [^a-zA-Z]
blank	Any whitespace character that is not a line separator.
cntrl	Any control character	[[:cntrl:]] → [\x01-\x31] [^[:cntrl:]] → [^\x01-\x31]
digit d	Any decimal digit	[[:digit:]] → [0-9] [^[:digit:]] → [^0-9]
lower l	Any lower case character.	[[:lower:]] → [a-z] [^[:lower:]] → [^a-z]
print	Any printable character.
punct	Any punctiation character.
space s	Any whitespace character.
upper u	Any upper case character.	[[:upper:]] → [A-Z] [^[:upper:]] → [^A-Z]
word w	Any control character	[[:word:]] → [0-9a-zA-Z_] [^[:word:]] → [^0-9a-zA-Z_]
xdigit	Any hexadecimal digit character	[[:xdigit:]] → [0-9a-fA-F] [^[:xdigit:]] → [^0-9a-fA-F]