Formatting the Output of Regular Expressions
Learn about the components of regular expressions and the art of desired outputs from regular expressions.
Components of a regular expression
Below are the basic components that make up a regular expression:
Characters : These appear in the string being matched. For example, the characters a
and b
appear in the string abc
.
Metacharacters : These have a special meaning in a regular expression. For example, the metacharacter .
(dot) matches any character.
Quantifiers : These specify how many of the previous characters, or groups of characters, must be present. For example, the quantifier *
(asterisk) means “zero or more occurrences.”
Regular Expression Options : These change the way a regular expression is matched. For example, the i
(ignore case) or RegexOptions.IgnoreCase
option means that the case should be ignored when matching.
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