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Nicholas Clark
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perlreref - Perl Regular Expressions Reference




  =~ determines to which variable the regex is applied.
     In its absence, $_ is used.

        $var =~ /foo/;

  !~ determines to which variable the regex is applied,
     and negates the result of the match; it returns
     false if the match succeeds, and true if it fails.

       $var !~ /foo/;

  m/pattern/igmsoxc searches a string for a pattern match,
     applying the given options.

        i  case-Insensitive
        g  Global - all occurrences
        m  Multiline mode - ^ and $ match internal lines
        s  match as a Single line - . matches \n
        o  compile pattern Once
        x  eXtended legibility - free whitespace and comments
        c  don't reset pos on failed matches when using /g

     If 'pattern' is an empty string, the last I<successfully> matched
     operator and the following ones.

  qr/pattern/imsox lets you store a regex in a variable,
     or pass one around. Modifiers as for m// and are stored
     within the regex.

  s/pattern/replacement/igmsoxe substitutes matches of
     with one addition:

        e  Evaluate replacement as an expression


      delimiters can be used. Must be reset with L<reset|perlfunc/reset>.


   \       Escapes the character immediately following it
   *       Matches the preceding element 0 or more times
   +       Matches the preceding element 1 or more times
   ?       Matches the preceding element 0 or 1 times
   |       Matches either the subexpression preceding or following it
   \1, \2 ...  The text from the Nth group


These work as in normal strings.

   \a       Alarm (beep)
   \e       Escape
   \f       Formfeed
   \n       Newline
   \r       Carriage return
   \t       Tab
   \038     Any octal ASCII value
   \x7f     Any hexadecimal ASCII value
   \x{263a} A wide hexadecimal value
   \cx      Control-x
   \N{name} A named character

   \l  Lowercase next character
   \u  Titlecase next character
   \L  Lowercase until \E
   \U  Uppercase until \E
   \Q  Disable pattern metacharacters until \E
   \E  End case modification

For Titlecase, see "Titlecase".

This one works differently from normal strings:



   [f-j]    Dash specifies "range"

The following sequences work within or without a character class. The first six are locale aware, all are Unicode aware. The default character class equivalent are given. See perllocale and perlunicode for details.

   \d      A digit                     [0-9]
   \D      A nondigit                  [^0-9]
   \w      A word character            [a-zA-Z0-9_]
   \W      A non-word character        [^a-zA-Z0-9_]
   \s      A whitespace character      [ \t\n\r\f]
   \S      A non-whitespace character  [^ \t\n\r\f]

   \pP     Match P-named (Unicode) property
   \PP     Match non-P
   \X      Match extended unicode sequence

POSIX character classes and their Unicode and Perl equivalents:

   alnum   IsAlnum              Alphanumeric
   alpha   IsAlpha              Alphabetic
   ascii   IsASCII              Any ASCII char
   blank   IsSpace  [ \t]       Horizontal whitespace (GNU extension)
   cntrl   IsCntrl              Control characters
   digit   IsDigit  \d          Digits
   graph   IsGraph              Alphanumeric and punctuation
   lower   IsLower              Lowercase chars (locale and Unicode aware)
   print   IsPrint              Alphanumeric, punct, and space
   punct   IsPunct              Punctuation
   space   IsSpace  [\s\ck]     Whitespace
           IsSpacePerl   \s     Perl's whitespace definition
   upper   IsUpper              Uppercase chars (locale and Unicode aware)
   word    IsWord   \w          Alphanumeric plus _ (Perl extension)

Within a character class:

    POSIX       traditional   Unicode
    [:digit:]       \d        \p{IsDigit}


All are zero-width assertions.

   \A Match string start (regardless of /m)
   \Z Match string end (before optional newline)
   \z Match absolute string end
   \G Match where previous m//g left off


Quantifiers are greedy by default -- match the longest leftmost.

   Maximal Minimal Allowed range
   {n,m}   {n,m}?  Must occur at least n times but no more than m times
   {n,}    {n,}?   Must occur at least n times
   {n}     {n}?    Must occur exactly n times
   *       *?      0 or more times (same as {0,})
   +       +?      1 or more times (same as {1,})
   ?       ??      0 or 1 time (same as {0,1})



   (?#text)         A comment
   (?imxs-imsx:...) Enable/disable option (as per m// modifiers)
   (?(cond)yes|no)  cond being integer corresponding to capturing parens
   (?(cond)yes)        or a lookaround/eval zero-width assertion


   $_    Default variable for operators to use
   $*    Enable multiline matching (deprecated; not in 5.9.0 or later)

   $&    Entire matched string
   $`    Everything prior to matched string
   $'    Everything after to matched string

The use of those last three will slow down all regex use within your program. Consult perlvar for @LAST_MATCH_START to see equivalent expressions that won't cause slow down. See also Devel::SawAmpersand.

   $+    Last parenthesized pattern match
   $^N   Holds the most recently closed capture

Captured groups are numbered according to their opening paren.


   lc          Lowercase a string
   lcfirst     Lowercase first char of a string
   uc          Uppercase a string
   ucfirst     Titlecase first char of a string

   pos         Return or set current match position
   quotemeta   Quote metacharacters
   reset       Reset ?pattern? status
   study       Analyze string for optimizing matching

   split       Use regex to split a string into parts






Iain Truskett.



