Summary of Metacharacters in Regular Expression

Metacharacter	Description
/	Begins and ends the regular expression
.	Matches any single character except the newline
element*	Matches element zero or more times
element+	Matches element one or more times
element?	Matches element zero or one time
[characters]	Matches a character out of those contained within the brackets
[^characters]	Matches a single character that is not contained within the brackets
(regex)	Treats the regex as a group for counting or a following *, +, or ?
left|right	Matches either left or right
[l–r]	Matches a range of characters between l and r
^	Requires match to be at the string’s start
$	Requires match to be at the string’s end
\b	Matches a word boundary
\B	Matches where there is not a word boundary
\d	Matches a single digit
\D	Matches a single nondigit
\n	Matches a newline character
\s	Matches a whitespace character
\S	Matches a nonwhitespace character
\t	Matches a tab character
\w	Matches a word character (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and _)
\W	Matches a nonword character (anything but a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and _)
\x	x (useful if x is a metacharacter, but you really want x)
{n}	Matches exactly n times
{n,}	Matches n times or more
{min,max}	Matches at least min and at most max times