Introduction to Regular Expressions

Illustrates circumstances that would benefit from the use of regular expressions.

Explains how to construct a regular expression.

Provides code examples that show how to search for patterns in a string, replace text, and extract substrings.

Summarizes the elements that make up the regular expression syntax and provides examples.

Describes how to match a single character from a list of characters or range of characters.

Explains how to search for a character or set of characters that is repeated a specific number of times.

Explains how to specify that a pattern that you are searching for has to appear either at the start or end of the searched string, or the start or end of a line or word in the searched string.

Explains how to specify a choice between two or more alternatives. Also explains how to create a subexpression.

Explains how to refer to a subexpression from within a regular expression, and from within a replacement string.

Clarifies how pattern-matching notation of regular expressions enables developers to quickly search large amounts of text to find specific character patterns; to extract, edit, replace, or delete text substrings; or to add extracted strings to a collection to generate a report.

Provides a list of links to code examples that illustrate the use of regular expressions in common applications.