NAME

       regexp - Plan 9 regular expression notation

DESCRIPTION

       This  manual  page  describes  the  regular  expression  syntax used by the Plan 9 regular
       expression library  regexp(3).   It  is  the  form  used  by  egrep(1)  before  egrep  got
       complicated.

       A  regular  expression  specifies a set of strings of characters.  A member of this set of
       strings is said to be matched by the regular expression.  In many applications a delimiter
       character,  commonly  bounds  a  regular  expression.   In the following specification for
       regular expressions the word `character' means any character (rune) but newline.

       The syntax for a regular expression e0 is

              e3:  literal | charclass | '.' | '^' | '$' | '(' e0 ')'

              e2:  e3
                |  e2 REP

              REP: '*' | '+' | '?'

              e1:  e2
                |  e1 e2

              e0:  e1
                |  e0 '|' e1

       A literal is any non-metacharacter, or a  metacharacter  (one  of  .*+?[]()|\^$),  or  the
       delimiter preceded by

       A  charclass  is  a nonempty string s bracketed [s] (or [^s]); it matches any character in
       (or not in) s.  A negated character class never matches newline.  A substring a-b, with  a
       and  b  in  ascending order, stands for the inclusive range of characters between a and b.
       In s, the metacharacters an initial and the regular expression delimiter must be  preceded
       by a other metacharacters have no special meaning and may appear unescaped.

       A matches any character.

       A matches the beginning of a line; matches the end of the line.

       The  REP  operators  match  zero  or more (*), one or more (+), zero or one (?), instances
       respectively of the preceding regular expression e2.

       A concatenated regular expression, e1e2, matches a match to e1 followed by a match to e2.

       An alternative regular expression, e0|e1, matches either a match to e0 or a match to e1.

       A match to any part of a regular expression extends as far as possible without  preventing
       a match to the remainder of the regular expression.

SEE ALSO

       regexp(3)

                                                                                        REGEXP(7)