B.1 Character Escapes

The following table describes the escape characters and sequences that can be used in regular expressions:

Table B.1

List of Character Escapes

Escaped Character

Description

(Ordinary characters)

Characters other than . $ ^ { [ ( | ) * + ? \ match themselves.

\a

Matches a bell (alarm) \u0007.

\t

Matches a tab \u0009.

\r

Matches a carriage return \u000D.

\v

Matches a vertical tab \u000B.

\f

Matches a form feed \u000C.

\n

Matches a new line \u000A.

\e

Matches an escape \u001B.

\040

Matches an ASCII character as octal (exactly three digits). The character \040 represents a space.

\x20

Matches an ASCII character using hexadecimal representation (exactly two digits).

\u0020

Matches a Unicode character using hexadecimal representation (exactly four digits).

\

When followed by a character that is not recognized as an escaped character, matches that character. For example, \* is the same as \x2A.