Finding Text Using Regular Expressions
Regular Expression Syntax Rules
The editor's Find and Find & Replace operations support using regular expressions when specifying the text that is to be searched.
The Studio's regular expression implementation is a partial implementation of Perl regular expressions. The following syntax rules are supported:
Metacharacters
\ Quote the next metacharacter
. Match any character
| Alternation (OR’d expression)
() Grouping
[] Set of characters. For example, “[0123a-z]” will match 0, 1, 2, 3, and all lowercase alphabet characters. If the first character is ‘^’, none of the specified characters must be present in order to match.
^ Match the beginning of the line.
$ Match the end of the line.
Quantifiers (Greedy)
* Match 0 or more times
+ Match 1 or more times
? Match 0 or 1 times
{n} Match exactly n times
{n,} Match at least n times
{n,m} Match at least n but not more than m times
By default, a quantified subpattern is “greedy,” meaning it will match as many times as possible while still allowing the rest of the pattern to match. If you wish for a regular expression to match the minimum number of times possible, follow the quantifier with a question mark (‘?’).
Quantifiers (Non-Greedy)
*? Match 0 or more times
+? Match 1 or more times
?? Match 0 or 1 times
{n}? Match exactly n times
{n,}? Match at least n times
{n,m}? Match at least n but not more than m times
Escape Sequences
\t Match a tab character
\w Match a "word" character (alphanumeric plus "_")
\W Match a non-"word" character
\s Match a whitespace character
\S Match a non-whitespace character
\d Match a digit character
\D Match a non-digit character
\b Match a word boundary
\B Match a non-word boundary
\a Match only at the beginning of the line
\z Match only at the end of the line