VBScript Programmer's Reference, Third Edition

Appendix H. Regular Expressions

A regular expression is a pattern of text that consists of ordinary characters (such as letters a through z) and special characters that are known as metacharacters. The pattern is used to describe one or more strings to match when searching a body of text. The regular expression acts as a template for matching a character pattern to the string that is being searched for.

The following table contains the complete list of metacharacters and their behavior in the context of a regular expression.

Character	Description
\	Marks the next character as either a special character or a literal
^	Matches the beginning of input
$	Matches the end of input
*	Matches the preceding character zero or more times
+	Matches the preceding character one or more times
?	Matches the preceding character zero or one time
.	Matches any single character except a new-line character
(pattern)	Matches pattern and remembers the match. The matched substring can be retrieved from the resulting Matches collection, using Item [0]...[n]. To match the parentheses characters themselves, precede with slash — use "\" or "(\").
(?:pattern)	Matches pattern but does not capture the match, that is, it is a noncapturing match that is not stored for possible later use. This is useful for combining parts of a pattern with the "or" character (!). For example, "anomal (?:y ! ies)" is a more economical expression than "anomaly ! anomalies".
(?=pattern)	Positive lookahead matches the search string at any point where a string ...