Character Class Matching

Character class matching is useful when the subject text contains one of a subset of characters combined with a known text string. Subsets are defined enclosing the characters in square brackets, e.g. [CMS]. A shorthand notation is provided for commonly used character sets.

SymbolMeaningExample
[...]Match any one of the characters in the set - defined in square brackets
[CMS]at matches "Cat", "Mat" and "Sat" but not "Rat"
[^...]Exclude matches containing characters in the set
[^CMS]at matches "Rat" but not Cat, Mat or Sat
[..-..]The - character is used to define a character class range - very useful for validating IP addresses, telephone numbers, social security numbers etc.
[0-2][0-9][0-9] matches "255" but not 512
.Match any character except a line terminator such as the newline character.oodle would match "doodle", "noodle" and "poodle"
\wMatch any alphanumeric character including the underscore.\Windows\w\w would match "Windows95" and "WindowsXP" but not "Windows Vista"
\WMatch any character that is not alphanumeric or the underscore - equivalent to [^a-zA-Z0-9_]
CSS\W\w matches "CSS 3" but not CSS_3
\dMatch any digit - equivalent to [0-9]
Windows \d\d matches "Windows 95" but Windows XP
\DMatch any non digit character - equivalent to [^0-9]
Windows \D\D matches "Windows XP" but Windows 95
\sMatch any space character - equivalent to [\n\f\r\t\v].
Windows\s\w\w matches "Windows 95" but not Windows-95 or Windows_XP
\SMatch any non-space character - i.e. [^\n\f\r\t\v].
Windows\S\w\w matches "Windows_95" but not Windows 95 or Windows XP
Regular Expression Sandbox
Model
Data

Do not wrap the model expression in a /.../ pair. The characters ^$.?*!+:=()[]{}|\\ must be escaped - except when then occur inside a character class. Invalid characters will be grayed out.
Result Left Text Match Right Text
       

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