Regular Expression Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

Supported Metacharacters

awk, egrep, and sed support the metacharacters and metasequences listed in Table 61 through Table 65. For expanded definitions of each metacharacter, see "Regex Metacharacters, Modes, and Constructs.”

Table 1-61. Shell character representations

Sequence	Meaning	Tool
\a	Alert (bell).	awk, sed
\b	Backspace; supported only in character class.	awk
\f	Form feed.	awk, sed
\n	Newline (line feed).	awk, sed
\r	Carriage return.	awk, sed
\t	Horizontal tab.	awk, sed
\v	Vertical tab.	awk, sed
\ooctal	A character specified by a one-, two-, or three-digit octal code.	sed
\octal	A character specified by a one-, two-, or three-digit octal code.	awk
\xhex	A character specified by a two-digit hexadecimal code.	awk, sed
\ddecimal	A character specified by a one, two, or three decimal code.	awk, sed
\cchar	A named control character (e.g., \cC is Control-C).	awk, sed
\b	Backspace.	awk
\metacharacter	Escape the metacharacter, so that it literally represents itself.	awk, sed, egrep

Table 1-62. Shell character classes and class-like constructs

Class	Meaning	Tool
[...]	Matches any single character listed, or contained within a listed range.	awk, sed, egrep
[^...]	Matches any single character that is not listed, or contained within a listed range.	awk, sed, egrep
.	Matches any single character, except newline.	awk, sed, egrep
\w	Matches an ASCII word character, [a-zA-Z0-9_].	egrep, sed
\W	Matches a character that is not an ASCII word character, [^a-zA-Z0-9_].	egrep, sed
[:prop:]	Matches any character in the POSIX character class.	awk, sed
[^[ ...