Regular expression syntax

A regular expression is a structured string that is used to match other strings. You can use regular expressions for data invalidation [Version 8.6 and later] and for filtering the messages that display in the message center.

Regular expression examples

Regular expression	Description
`.`	Finds any one character.
`.*`	Finds any one character zero or more times.
`A.*`	Finds all strings that start with "A".
`.*A`	Finds all strings that end with "A".
`A?`	Finds "A", zero or one time.
`A*`	Finds "A", zero or many times.
`A+`	Finds "A", one time or many times.
`A?B*C+`	Finds any one character, followed by zero or one A, followed by zero or many Bs, followed by one or many Cs
`[ABC].*`	Finds strings that start with the letters "A", or "B", or "C".
`.ABC.`	Finds strings with the string "ABC" somewhere in the string.
`(ABC\|DEF).*`	Finds strings that start with the string "ABC" or "DEF".

See the java.util.regex.Pattern API documentation for the full regular expression syntax.