Appendix G. ICU regular expressions

The following appendix is extracted from the ICU User Guide. This appendix describes the specifics of the ICU regular expression implementation. This information is essential if you are using the Agent Builder regular expression feature because different programming languages implement regular expressions in slightly different ways.

Table 53. Regular expression metacharacters
Character Description
\a Match a BELL, \u0007
\A Match at the beginning of the input. Differs from ^ in that \A does not match after a new line within the input.
\b, outside of a [Set] Match if the current position is a word boundary. Boundaries occur at the transitions between word (\w) and non-word (\W) characters, with combining marks ignored. For more information about word boundaries, see ICU Boundary Analysis.
\b, within a [Set] Match a BACKSPACE, \u0008.
\B Match if the current position is not a word boundary.
\cX Match a control-X character.
\d Match any character with the Unicode General Category of Nd (Number, Decimal Digit.)
\D Match any character that is not a decimal digit.
\e Match an ESCAPE, \u001B.
\E Terminates a \Q ... \E quoted sequence.
\f Match a FORM FEED, \u000C.
\G Match if the current position is at the end of the previous match.
\n Match a LINE FEED, \u000A.
\N{UNICODE CHARACTER NAME} Match the named character.
\p{UNICODE PROPERTY NAME} Match any character with the specified Unicode Property.
\P{UNICODE PROPERTY NAME} Match any character not having the specified Unicode Property.
\Q Place quotation marks around all following characters until \E.
\r Match a CARRIAGE RETURN, \u000D.
\s Match a white space character. White space is defined as [\t\n\f\r\p{Z}].
\S Match a non-white space character.
\t Match a HORIZONTAL TABULATION, \u0009.
\uhhhh Match the character with the hex value hhhh.
\Uhhhhhhhh Match the character with the hex value hhhhhhhh. Exactly eight hex digits must be provided, even though the largest Unicode code point is \U0010ffff.
\w Match a word character. Word characters are [\p{Ll}\p{Lu}\p{Lt}\p{Lo}\p{Nd}].
\W Match a non-word character.
\x{hhhh} Match the character with hex value hhhh. From one to six hex digits may be supplied.
\xhh Match the character with two digit hex value hh.
\X Match a Grapheme Cluster.
\Z\ Match if the current position is at the end of input, but before the final line terminator, if one exists.
\z Match if the current position is at the end of input.
\n Back Reference. Match whatever the nth capturing group matched. n must be a number > 1 and < total number of capture groups in the pattern.
Note:
Octal escapes, such as \012, are not supported in ICU regular expressions.
[pattern] Match any one character from the set. See UnicodeSet for a full description of what may appear in the pattern
. Match any character.
^ Match at the beginning of a line.
$ Match at the end of a line.
\ Place quotation marks around the following character. Characters that must have surrounding quotation marks to be treated as literals are * ? + [ ( ) { } ^ $ | \ . /
Table 54. Regular expression operators
Operator Description
| Alternation. A|B matches either A or B.
* Match 0 or more times. Match as many times as possible.
+ Match 1 or more times. Match as many times as possible.
? Match zero or one times. Prefer one.
{n} Match exactly n times
{n,} Match at least n times. Match as many times as possible.
{n,m} Match between n and m times. Match as many times as possible, but not more than m.
*? Match 0 or more times. Match as few times as possible.
+? Match 1 or more times. Match as few times as possible.
?? Match zero or one times. Prefer zero.
{n}? Match exactly n times
{n,}? Match at least n times, but no more than required for an overall pattern match
{n,m}? Match between n and m times. Match as few times as possible, but not less than n.
*+ Match 0 or more times. Match as many times as possible when first encountered, do not retry with fewer even if overall match fails (Possessive Match)
++ Match 1 or more times. Possessive match.
?+ Match zero or one times. Possessive match.
{n}+ Match exactly n times
{n,}+ Match at least n times. Possessive Match.
{n,m}+ Match between n and m times. Possessive Match.
( ... ) Capturing parentheses. Range of input that matched the parenthesized subexpression is available after the match.
(?: ... ) Non-capturing parentheses. Groups the included pattern, but does not provide capturing of matching text. Somewhat more efficient than capturing parentheses.
(?> ... ) Atomic-match parentheses. First match of the parenthesized subexpression is the only one tried; if it does not lead to an overall pattern match, back up the search for a match to a position before the "(?>"
(?# ... ) Free-format comment (?# comment ).
(?= ... ) Look-ahead assertion. True if the parenthesized pattern matches at the current input position, but does not advance the input position.
(?! ... ) Negative look-ahead assertion. True if the parenthesized pattern does not match at the current input position. Does not advance the input position.
(?<= ... ) Look-behind assertion. True if the parenthesized pattern matches text preceding the current input position, with the last character of the match being the input character just before the current position. Does not alter the input position. The length of possible strings matched by the look-behind pattern must not be unbounded (no * or + operators.)
(?<!...) Negative Look-behind assertion. True if the parenthesized pattern does not match text preceding the current input position, with the last character of the match being the input character just before the current position. Does not alter the input position. The length of possible strings matched by the look-behind pattern must not be unbounded (no * or + operators.)
(?ismx-ismx: ... ) Flag settings. Evaluate the parenthesized expression with the specified flags enabled or -disabled.
(?ismx-ismx) Flag settings. Change the flag settings. Changes apply to the portion of the pattern following the setting. For example, (?i) changes to a case insensitive match.