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Chapter 3: Posix Basic Regular Expressions

The Posix Basic Regular Expression language is a notation for describing textual patterns. Regexps are typically used by comparing them to a string to see if that string matches the pattern, or by searching within a string for a substring that matches.

This chapter introduces the Posix regexp notation. This is not a formal or precise definition of Posix regexps -- it is an intuitive and hopefully expository description of them.

  • An Introduction to Regexps
  • Literal Regexps
  • Character Sets
  • Subexpressions
  • Repeated Subexpressions
  • Optional Subexpressions
  • Counted Subexpressions
  • Alternative Subexpressions
  • Backreferences
  • A Summary of Regexp Syntax
  • Ambiguous Patterns

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