RFC2440

[ Contents ]

8. Regular Expressions

   A regular expression is zero or more branches, separated by '|'. It
   matches anything that matches one of the branches.

   A branch is zero or more pieces, concatenated. It matches a match for
   the first, followed by a match for the second, etc.

   A piece is an atom possibly followed by '*', '+', or '?'. An atom
   followed by '*' matches a sequence of 0 or more matches of the atom.
   An atom followed by '+' matches a sequence of 1 or more matches of
   the atom. An atom followed by '?' matches a match of the atom, or the
   null string.

   An atom is a regular expression in parentheses (matching a match for
   the regular expression), a range (see below), '.' (matching any
   single character), '^' (matching the null string at the beginning of
   the input string), '$' (matching the null string at the end of the
   input string), a '\' followed by a single character (matching that
   character), or a single character with no other significance
   (matching that character).

   A range is a sequence of characters enclosed in '[]'. It normally
   matches any single character from the sequence. If the sequence
   begins with '^', it matches any single character not from the rest of
   the sequence. If two characters in the sequence are separated by '-',
   this is shorthand for the full list of ASCII characters between them
   (e.g. '[0-9]' matches any decimal digit). To include a literal ']' in
   the sequence, make it the first character (following a possible '^').
   To include a literal '-', make it the first or last character.

HTML conversion and comments on this are RFC are Copyright (c) 1998 Werner Koch, Remscheider Str. 22, 40215 Düsseldorf, Germany. Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. See here for copyright information on the RFC itself.

Updated: 1999-09-30 wkoch