Provided by: tcl8.6-doc_8.6.10+dfsg-1_all bug

NAME

       re_syntax - Syntax of Tcl regular expressions
_________________________________________________________________

DESCRIPTION

       A regular expression describes strings of characters.  It's a pattern that matches certain
       strings and does not match others.

DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF REs

       Regular expressions (“RE”s), as defined by  POSIX,  come  in  two  flavors:  extended  REs
       (“ERE”s)  and  basic REs (“BRE”s).  EREs are roughly those of the traditional egrep, while
       BREs are roughly those of the traditional ed. This implementation  adds  a  third  flavor,
       advanced REs (“ARE”s), basically EREs with some significant extensions.

       This manual page primarily describes AREs. BREs mostly exist for backward compatibility in
       some old programs; they will be discussed at the end.  POSIX  EREs  are  almost  an  exact
       subset of AREs. Features of AREs that are not present in EREs will be indicated.

REGULAR EXPRESSION SYNTAX

       Tcl  regular expressions are implemented using the package written by Henry Spencer, based
       on the 1003.2 spec and some (not quite all) of the Perl5 extensions (thanks, Henry!). Much
       of the description of regular expressions below is copied verbatim from his manual entry.

       An  ARE  is  one or more branches, separated by “|”, matching anything that matches any of
       the branches.

       A branch is zero or more constraints or quantified  atoms,  concatenated.   It  matches  a
       match  for the first, followed by a match for the second, etc; an empty branch matches the
       empty string.

   QUANTIFIERS
       A quantified atom is an  atom  possibly  followed  by  a  single  quantifier.   Without  a
       quantifier,  it  matches  a  single  match  for the atom.  The quantifiers, and what a so-
       quantified atom matches, are:

         *     a sequence of 0 or more matches of the atom

         +     a sequence of 1 or more matches of the atom

         ?     a sequence of 0 or 1 matches of the atom

         {m}   a sequence of exactly m matches of the atom

         {m,}  a sequence of m or more matches of the atom

         {m,n} a sequence of m through n (inclusive) matches of the atom; m may not exceed n

         *?  +?  ??  {m}?  {m,}?  {m,n}?
               non-greedy quantifiers,  which  match  the  same  possibilities,  but  prefer  the
               smallest number rather than the largest number of matches (see MATCHING)

       The  forms  using  {  and  } are known as bounds. The numbers m and n are unsigned decimal
       integers with permissible values from 0 to 255 inclusive.

   ATOMS
       An atom is one of:

         (re)  matches a match for re (re is any regular expression) with  the  match  noted  for
               possible reporting

         (?:re)
               as previous, but does no reporting (a “non-capturing” set of parentheses)

         ()    matches an empty string, noted for possible reporting

         (?:)  matches an empty string, without reporting

         [chars]
               a  bracket  expression, matching any one of the chars (see BRACKET EXPRESSIONS for
               more detail)

         .     matches any single character

         \k    matches the non-alphanumeric character k taken as an ordinary character,  e.g.  \\
               matches a backslash character

         \c    where  c  is alphanumeric (possibly followed by other characters), an escape (AREs
               only), see ESCAPES below

         {     when followed by a character other than a digit, matches the left-brace  character
               “{”; when followed by a digit, it is the beginning of a bound (see above)

         x     where x is a single character with no other significance, matches that character.

   CONSTRAINTS
       A  constraint  matches  an empty string when specific conditions are met. A constraint may
       not be followed by a  quantifier.  The  simple  constraints  are  as  follows;  some  more
       constraints are described later, under ESCAPES.

         ^       matches at the beginning of a line

         $       matches at the end of a line

         (?=re)  positive  lookahead (AREs only), matches at any point where a substring matching
                 re begins

         (?!re)  negative lookahead (AREs only), matches at any point where no substring matching
                 re begins

       The lookahead constraints may not contain back references (see later), and all parentheses
       within them are considered non-capturing.

       An RE may not end with “\”.

BRACKET EXPRESSIONS

       A bracket expression is a list of characters enclosed in “[]”.  It  normally  matches  any
       single  character  from  the list (but see below). If the list begins with “^”, it matches
       any single character (but see below) not from the rest of the list.

       If two characters in the list are separated by “-”, this is shorthand for the  full  range
       of  characters  between  those two (inclusive) in the collating sequence, e.g.  “[0-9]” in
       Unicode matches any conventional decimal digit. Two ranges may not share an  endpoint,  so
       e.g.   “a-c-e”  is  illegal.  Ranges in Tcl always use the Unicode collating sequence, but
       other  programs  may  use  other  collating  sequences  and  this  can  be  a  source   of
       incompatibility between programs.

       To include a literal ] or - in the list, the simplest method is to enclose it in [. and .]
       to make it a collating element (see below). Alternatively, make  it  the  first  character
       (following  a  possible “^”), or (AREs only) precede it with “\”.  Alternatively, for “-”,
       make it the last character, or the second endpoint of a range. To use a literal -  as  the
       first endpoint of a range, make it a collating element or (AREs only) precede it with “\”.
       With the exception of these, some combinations using [ (see next paragraphs), and escapes,
       all other special characters lose their special significance within a bracket expression.

   CHARACTER CLASSES
       Within  a  bracket  expression, the name of a character class enclosed in [: and :] stands
       for the list of all characters (not all collating  elements!)  belonging  to  that  class.
       Standard character classes are:

       alpha   A letter.

       upper   An upper-case letter.

       lower   A lower-case letter.

       digit   A decimal digit.

       xdigit  A hexadecimal digit.

       alnum   An alphanumeric (letter or digit).

       print   A "printable" (same as graph, except also including space).

       blank   A space or tab character.

       space   A character producing white space in displayed text.

       punct   A punctuation character.

       graph   A character with a visible representation (includes both alnum and punct).

       cntrl   A control character.

       A locale may provide others. A character class may not be used as an endpoint of a range.

              (Note:  the  current  Tcl  implementation  has only one locale, the Unicode locale,
              which supports exactly the above classes.)

   BRACKETED CONSTRAINTS
       There are two special cases of bracket expressions: the bracket expressions “[[:<:]]”  and
       “[[:>:]]”  are  constraints,  matching  empty  strings  at the beginning and end of a word
       respectively.  A word is defined as a sequence of word characters that is neither preceded
       nor  followed  by word characters. A word character is an alnum character or an underscore
       (“_”).  These special bracket  expressions  are  deprecated;  users  of  AREs  should  use
       constraint escapes instead (see below).

   COLLATING ELEMENTS
       Within  a bracket expression, a collating element (a character, a multi-character sequence
       that collates as if it were a single character, or a collating-sequence name  for  either)
       enclosed in [. and .] stands for the sequence of characters of that collating element. The
       sequence is a single element of the bracket expression's list. A bracket expression  in  a
       locale that has multi-character collating elements can thus match more than one character.
       So (insidiously), a bracket expression  that  starts  with  ^  can  match  multi-character
       collating elements even if none of them appear in the bracket expression!

              (Note:  Tcl has no multi-character collating elements. This information is only for
              illustration.)

       For example, assume  the  collating  sequence  includes  a  ch  multi-character  collating
       element.  Then  the RE “[[.ch.]]*c” (zero or more “chs” followed by “c”) matches the first
       five characters of “chchcc”.  Also, the RE “[^c]b” matches all of  “chb”  (because  “[^c]”
       matches the multi-character “ch”).

   EQUIVALENCE CLASSES
       Within  a  bracket expression, a collating element enclosed in [= and =] is an equivalence
       class, standing for the sequences of characters of all collating  elements  equivalent  to
       that  one,  including  itself.  (If  there are no other equivalent collating elements, the
       treatment is as if the enclosing delimiters were “[.” and “.]”.)  For example, if o and  ô
       are  the  members  of  an equivalence class, then “[[=o=]]”, “[[=ô=]]”, and “[oô]” are all
       synonymous. An equivalence class may not be an endpoint of a range.

              (Note: Tcl implements only the Unicode locale. It does not define  any  equivalence
              classes. The examples above are just illustrations.)

ESCAPES

       Escapes  (AREs  only), which begin with a \ followed by an alphanumeric character, come in
       several varieties:  character  entry,  class  shorthands,  constraint  escapes,  and  back
       references.  A \ followed by an alphanumeric character but not constituting a valid escape
       is illegal in AREs. In EREs, there are no escapes:  outside  a  bracket  expression,  a  \
       followed  by  an  alphanumeric  character  merely stands for that character as an ordinary
       character, and inside a bracket expression, \ is an ordinary character. (The latter is the
       one actual incompatibility between EREs and AREs.)

   CHARACTER-ENTRY ESCAPES
       Character-entry  escapes  (AREs  only) exist to make it easier to specify non-printing and
       otherwise inconvenient characters in REs:

         \a   alert (bell) character, as in C

         \b   backspace, as in C

         \B   synonym for \ to help reduce backslash doubling in some  applications  where  there
              are multiple levels of backslash processing

         \cX  (where  X  is  any  character) the character whose low-order 5 bits are the same as
              those of X, and whose other bits are all zero

         \e   the character  whose  collating-sequence  name  is  “ESC”,  or  failing  that,  the
              character with octal value 033

         \f   formfeed, as in C

         \n   newline, as in C

         \r   carriage return, as in C

         \t   horizontal tab, as in C

         \uwxyz
              (where  wxyz  is one up to four hexadecimal digits) the Unicode character U+wxyz in
              the local byte ordering

         \Ustuvwxyz
              (where stuvwxyz is one up to eight  hexadecimal  digits)  reserved  for  a  Unicode
              extension  up  to  21  bits.  The digits are parsed until the first non-hexadecimal
              character is encountered, the maximun of eight hexadecimal digits are  reached,  or
              an overflow would occur in the maximum value of U+10ffff.

         \v   vertical tab, as in C are all available.

         \xhh (where  hh  is one or two hexadecimal digits) the character whose hexadecimal value
              is 0xhh.

         \0   the character whose value is 0

         \xyz (where xyz is exactly three octal digits, and is not a back reference (see  below))
              the  character whose octal value is 0xyz. The first digit must be in the range 0-3,
              otherwise the two-digit form is assumed.

         \xy  (where xy is exactly two octal digits, and is not a back reference (see below)) the
              character whose octal value is 0xy

       Hexadecimal digits are “0”-“9”, “a”-“f”, and “A”-“F”.  Octal digits are “0”-“7”.

       The character-entry escapes are always taken as ordinary characters.  For example, \135 is
       ] in Unicode, but \135 does not terminate a bracket expression. Beware, however, that some
       applications  (e.g.,  C compilers and the Tcl interpreter if the regular expression is not
       quoted with braces) interpret such  sequences  themselves  before  the  regular-expression
       package gets to see them, which may require doubling (quadrupling, etc.) the “\”.

   CLASS-SHORTHAND ESCAPES
       Class-shorthand escapes (AREs only) provide shorthands for certain commonly-used character
       classes:

         \d        [[:digit:]]

         \s        [[:space:]]

         \w        [[:alnum:]_] (note underscore)

         \D        [^[:digit:]]

         \S        [^[:space:]]

         \W        [^[:alnum:]_] (note underscore)

       Within bracket expressions, “\d”, “\s”, and “\w” lose  their  outer  brackets,  and  “\D”,
       “\S”, and “\W” are illegal. (So, for example, “[a-c\d]” is equivalent to “[a-c[:digit:]]”.
       Also, “[a-c\D]”, which is equivalent to “[a-c^[:digit:]]”, is illegal.)

   CONSTRAINT ESCAPES
       A constraint escape (AREs only) is a constraint, matching the  empty  string  if  specific
       conditions are met, written as an escape:

         \A    matches  only  at  the  beginning of the string (see MATCHING, below, for how this
               differs from “^”)

         \m    matches only at the beginning of a word

         \M    matches only at the end of a word

         \y    matches only at the beginning or end of a word

         \Y    matches only at a point that is not the beginning or end of a word

         \Z    matches only at the end of the string (see MATCHING, below, for how  this  differs
               from “$”)

         \m    (where m is a nonzero digit) a back reference, see below

         \mnn  (where m is a nonzero digit, and nn is some more digits, and the decimal value mnn
               is not greater than the number of closing capturing parentheses  seen  so  far)  a
               back reference, see below

       A  word  is  defined  as in the specification of “[[:<:]]” and “[[:>:]]” above. Constraint
       escapes are illegal within bracket expressions.

   BACK REFERENCES
       A back reference (AREs  only)  matches  the  same  string  matched  by  the  parenthesized
       subexpression specified by the number, so that (e.g.)  “([bc])\1” matches “bb” or “cc” but
       not “bc”.  The  subexpression  must  entirely  precede  the  back  reference  in  the  RE.
       Subexpressions  are  numbered  in  the  order of their leading parentheses.  Non-capturing
       parentheses do not define subexpressions.

       There is an inherent historical ambiguity between octal character-entry escapes  and  back
       references,  which  is  resolved  by heuristics, as hinted at above. A leading zero always
       indicates an octal escape. A single non-zero digit, not  followed  by  another  digit,  is
       always taken as a back reference. A multi-digit sequence not starting with a zero is taken
       as a back reference if it comes after a suitable subexpression (i.e. the number is in  the
       legal range for a back reference), and otherwise is taken as octal.

METASYNTAX

       In  addition  to  the  main  syntax  described  above,  there  are  some special forms and
       miscellaneous syntactic facilities available.

       Normally the flavor of RE being used is specified by application-dependent means. However,
       this  can be overridden by a director. If an RE of any flavor begins with “***:”, the rest
       of the RE is an ARE. If an RE of any flavor begins with “***=”, the  rest  of  the  RE  is
       taken to be a literal string, with all characters considered ordinary characters.

       An  ARE  may  begin  with  embedded  options:  a sequence (?xyz) (where xyz is one or more
       alphabetic characters) specifies options affecting the rest of the RE.  These  supplement,
       and  can  override, any options specified by the application. The available option letters
       are:

         b  rest of RE is a BRE

         c  case-sensitive matching (usual default)

         e  rest of RE is an ERE

         i  case-insensitive matching (see MATCHING, below)

         m  historical synonym for n

         n  newline-sensitive matching (see MATCHING, below)

         p  partial newline-sensitive matching (see MATCHING, below)

         q  rest of RE is a literal (“quoted”) string, all ordinary characters

         s  non-newline-sensitive matching (usual default)

         t  tight syntax (usual default; see below)

         w  inverse partial newline-sensitive (“weird”) matching (see MATCHING, below)

         x  expanded syntax (see below)

       Embedded options take effect at the ) terminating the sequence.  They are  available  only
       at the start of an ARE, and may not be used later within it.

       In addition to the usual (tight) RE syntax, in which all characters are significant, there
       is an expanded syntax, available in all flavors of RE with the  -expanded  switch,  or  in
       AREs  with  the  embedded  x  option.  In  the expanded syntax, white-space characters are
       ignored and all characters between a # and the following newline (or the end  of  the  RE)
       are  ignored,  permitting  paragraphing  and  commenting  a  complex  RE.  There are three
       exceptions to that basic rule:

       •  a white-space character or “#” preceded by “\” is retained

       •  white space or “#” within a bracket expression is retained

       •  white space and comments are illegal within multi-character symbols like the ARE  “(?:”
          or the BRE “\(”

       Expanded-syntax  white-space  characters  are  blank, tab, newline, and any character that
       belongs to the space character class.

       Finally, in an ARE, outside bracket expressions, the sequence “(?#ttt)” (where ttt is  any
       text  not  containing  a “)”) is a comment, completely ignored. Again, this is not allowed
       between the characters of multi-character symbols like “(?:”.  Such comments  are  more  a
       historical  artifact than a useful facility, and their use is deprecated; use the expanded
       syntax instead.

       None of these metasyntax extensions is available if the application (or an initial  “***=”
       director)  has  specified that the user's input be treated as a literal string rather than
       as an RE.

MATCHING

       In the event that an RE could match more than one substring of  a  given  string,  the  RE
       matches  the  one  starting  earliest  in  the string. If the RE could match more than one
       substring starting at that point, its choice is determined by its preference:  either  the
       longest substring, or the shortest.

       Most  atoms,  and  all  constraints,  have  no preference. A parenthesized RE has the same
       preference (possibly none) as the RE. A quantified atom with quantifier {m}  or  {m}?  has
       the  same  preference  (possibly  none)  as  the atom itself. A quantified atom with other
       normal quantifiers (including {m,n} with m equal to n) prefers longest match. A quantified
       atom  with  other  non-greedy  quantifiers  (including  {m,n}?  with m equal to n) prefers
       shortest match. A branch has the same preference as the first quantified atom in it  which
       has  a  preference.  An  RE consisting of two or more branches connected by the | operator
       prefers longest match.

       Subject to the constraints imposed by the rules for matching the whole RE,  subexpressions
       also  match  the longest or shortest possible substrings, based on their preferences, with
       subexpressions starting earlier in the RE taking priority over ones starting  later.  Note
       that outer subexpressions thus take priority over their component subexpressions.

       The  quantifiers  {1,1}  and  {1,1}? can be used to force longest and shortest preference,
       respectively, on a subexpression or a whole RE.

              NOTE: This means that you can usually make a RE be non-greedy  overall  by  putting
              {1,1}? after one of the first non-constraint atoms or parenthesized sub-expressions
              in it. It pays to experiment with the placing of this non-greediness override on  a
              suitable range of input texts when you are writing a RE if you are using this level
              of complexity.

              For example, this regular expression is non-greedy, and  will  match  the  shortest
              substring  possible  given  that  “abc”  will  be matched as early as possible (the
              quantifier does not change that):

                     ab{1,1}?c.*x.*cba

              The atom “a” has no greediness preference, we explicitly give one for “b”, and  the
              remaining  quantifiers  are overridden to be non-greedy by the preceding non-greedy
              quantifier.

       Match lengths are measured in characters, not  collating  elements.  An  empty  string  is
       considered  longer  than  no  match  at  all.  For example, “bb*” matches the three middle
       characters  of  “abbbc”,  “(week|wee)(night|knights)”  matches  all  ten   characters   of
       “weeknights”,  when  “(.*).*”   is  matched  against “abc” the parenthesized subexpression
       matches all three characters, and when “(a*)*” is matched against “bc” both the  whole  RE
       and the parenthesized subexpression match an empty string.

       If  case-independent matching is specified, the effect is much as if all case distinctions
       had vanished from the alphabet. When an alphabetic that exists in multiple  cases  appears
       as  an ordinary character outside a bracket expression, it is effectively transformed into
       a bracket expression containing both cases, so that x becomes  “[xX]”.   When  it  appears
       inside  a  bracket  expression,  all  case  counterparts  of  it  are added to the bracket
       expression, so that “[x]” becomes “[xX]” and “[^x]” becomes “[^xX]”.

       If newline-sensitive matching is specified, . and bracket expressions using ^  will  never
       match  the  newline  character  (so  that  matches will never cross newlines unless the RE
       explicitly arranges it) and ^ and $ will match the empty string after and before a newline
       respectively,  in addition to matching at beginning and end of string respectively. ARE \A
       and \Z continue to match beginning or end of string only.

       If partial newline-sensitive matching is specified, this affects . and bracket expressions
       as with newline-sensitive matching, but not ^ and $.

       If  inverse  partial newline-sensitive matching is specified, this affects ^ and $ as with
       newline-sensitive matching, but not . and bracket expressions. This is not very useful but
       is provided for symmetry.

LIMITS AND COMPATIBILITY

       No  particular  limit  is  imposed  on  the  length of REs. Programs intended to be highly
       portable should not employ REs longer than 256 bytes, as a POSIX-compliant  implementation
       can refuse to accept such REs.

       The  only feature of AREs that is actually incompatible with POSIX EREs is that \ does not
       lose its special significance inside bracket  expressions.  All  other  ARE  features  use
       syntax  which  is  illegal  or has undefined or unspecified effects in POSIX EREs; the ***
       syntax of directors likewise is outside the POSIX syntax for both BREs and EREs.

       Many of the ARE extensions are borrowed from Perl, but some have  been  changed  to  clean
       them  up,  and  a  few Perl extensions are not present.  Incompatibilities of note include
       “\b”, “\B”, the lack of  special  treatment  for  a  trailing  newline,  the  addition  of
       complemented bracket expressions to the things affected by newline-sensitive matching, the
       restrictions on  parentheses  and  back  references  in  lookahead  constraints,  and  the
       longest/shortest-match (rather than first-match) matching semantics.

       The  matching rules for REs containing both normal and non-greedy quantifiers have changed
       since early beta-test versions of this package.  (The  new  rules  are  much  simpler  and
       cleaner, but do not work as hard at guessing the user's real intentions.)

       Henry  Spencer's  original  1986 regexp package, still in widespread use (e.g., in pre-8.1
       releases  of  Tcl),  implemented  an  early  version  of  today's  EREs.  There  are  four
       incompatibilities  between  regexp's  near-EREs  (“RREs”  for  short) and AREs. In roughly
       increasing order of significance:

       •  In AREs, \ followed by an alphanumeric character is either an escape or an error, while
          in  RREs,  it  was  just  another way of writing the alphanumeric. This should not be a
          problem because there was no reason to write such a sequence in RREs.

       •  { followed by a digit in an ARE is the beginning of a  bound,  while  in  RREs,  {  was
          always  an  ordinary character. Such sequences should be rare, and will often result in
          an error because following characters will not look like a valid bound.

       •  In AREs, \ remains a special character within “[]”, so a literal \ within  []  must  be
          written  “\\”.   \\  also  gives a literal \ within [] in RREs, but only truly paranoid
          programmers routinely doubled the backslash.

       •  AREs report the longest/shortest match for the RE, rather than the  first  found  in  a
          specified search order. This may affect some RREs which were written in the expectation
          that the first match would be reported. (The careful crafting of RREs to  optimize  the
          search  order  for  fast  matching  is  obsolete  (AREs examine all possible matches in
          parallel, and their performance is largely insensitive to their complexity)  but  cases
          where  the  search  order  was exploited to deliberately find a match which was not the
          longest/shortest will need rewriting.)

BASIC REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

       BREs differ from EREs in several respects.  “|”, “+”, and ? are  ordinary  characters  and
       there is no equivalent for their functionality. The delimiters for bounds are \{ and “\}”,
       with { and } by themselves ordinary characters. The parentheses for nested  subexpressions
       are  \(  and  “\)”,  with  (  and  )  by  themselves ordinary characters. ^ is an ordinary
       character except at  the  beginning  of  the  RE  or  the  beginning  of  a  parenthesized
       subexpression,  $  is  an  ordinary  character except at the end of the RE or the end of a
       parenthesized subexpression, and * is an ordinary character if it appears at the beginning
       of  the  RE  or  the  beginning of a parenthesized subexpression (after a possible leading
       “^”).  Finally, single-digit back references are available, and \< and \> are synonyms for
       “[[:<:]]” and “[[:>:]]” respectively; no other escapes are available.

SEE ALSO

       RegExp(3tcl), regexp(3tcl), regsub(3tcl), lsearch(3tcl), switch(3tcl), text(3tk)

KEYWORDS

       match, regular expression, string