Regex Basics

Here is some basic regex (Regularexpressions)

\d = digit

\d{1,2} = one or 2 digits

\d{3,} = 3 or more digits

\d+ = 1 or more digits

\d* = 0 or more digits

\D = NON digits

\w = word / letters / numbers

\w{3,6} = 3 to 6 letters or numbers

\W = NON words or numbers

\s = matches any white space character, such as tabs, spaces, and so forth.

\S = Any non space chars. space, tabs and so forth.

\\ = \

\. = .

\? = ?

\+ = +

\* = *

\b = word boundary. if i want a word this specifies the boundary. Example \b[Dd]an\b this would find "Dan" even at the start of a line or at "Dan." and only captures "Dan".

^ = marks the start of a line.

$ = ENDS the line (the same as ^, just for the end insted)

example:

"57\\Server2\Share" -match "\\\\\w+\\\w+" (True)
"57\\Server2\Share" -match "^\\\\\w+\\\w+" (False)

first is marked true while the second realises the 57 should not be there.

Its possible to make groups with the following example:

[a-z] = everything between a and z. This still counts as one character, so "a" would be true, and "ab" would be false.

[abc] =  "a" true, "b" true, "c" true, "ab" false and so on.

| = Or. for example "(?:[a-z]+|\d{1,3})/.([a-z]+|\d{1,3})" would capture "0.3" and "a.5"

() = capture group

(?:regex) = the ?: excludes the capture group from the final result.

\d{1,3}? = here ?  means NOT GREEDY so it would only take "1" in "123"

/i = makes the regex match case insensitive
/s = enables "single-line mode". In this mode, the dot matches newlines.
/m = enables "multi-line mode". In this mode, the caret and dollar match before and after newlines in the subject string.
/x = enables "free-spacing mode". In this mode, whitespace between regex tokens is ignored, and an unescaped # starts a comment.

Feel free to ask questions below.