Overview

The full syntax of the regular expressions is given in the following table.

character	what it matches with
.	any character
$\wedge$	first position in line
$	last position in line
[xyz]	one of the given characters
$\backslash$`char'	don't interprete `char'
<esc>`char'	don't interprete `char'
$\backslash$n	linefeed
<ret>	linefeed
"string"	match the string as one object
#	any digit
&	any alphabetic character
$\sim$	any alphanumeric character
!	any word character
!$\wedge$	any character not in words
/	end of search string
( )	consider contents as one object
a*	take object a zero or more times
a$+$	take object a one or more times
a?	take object a zero or one times
a{m,n}	take a at least m, at most n times
a$\mid$b	either a or b
a%b	a if followed by b
a@`digit'	put a in variable number `digit'

The special characters
a,b are generic objects