Special Characters
Visual Studio .NET 2003
A number of metacharacters require special treatment when trying to match them. To match these special characters, you must first escape the characters, that is, precede them with a backslash character (\). The following table lists special characters and their meanings:
| Special Character | Comment |
|---|---|
| $ | Matches the position at the end of an input string. If the RegExp object's Multiline property is set, $ also matches the position preceding \n or \r. To match the $ character itself, use \$. |
| ( ) | Marks the beginning and end of a subexpression. Subexpressions may be captured for later use. To match these characters, use \( and \). |
| * | Matches the preceding character or subexpression zero or more times. To match the * character, use \*. |
| + | Matches the preceding character or subexpression one or more times. To match the + character, use \+. |
| . | Matches any single character except the newline character \n. To match ., use \. |
| [ ] | Marks the beginning of a bracket expression. To match these characters, use \[ and \]. |
| ? | Matches the preceding character or subexpression zero or one time, or indicates a non-greedy quantifier. To match the ? character, use \?. |
| \ | Marks the next character as a special character, a literal, a backreference, or an octal escape. For example, the character n matches the character n. \n matches a newline character. The sequence \\ matches \ and \( matches (. |
| / | Denotes the start or end of a literal regular expression. To match the / character, use \/. |
| ^ | Matches the position at the beginning of an input string except when used in a bracket expression where it negates the character set. To match the ^ character itself, use \^. |
| { } | Marks the beginning of a quantifier expression. To match these characters, use \{ and \}. |
| | | Indicates a choice between two items. To match |, use \|. |
