5. Regular Expressions

A regular expression is a pattern that describes a set of strings. Regular expressions are constructed analogously to arithmetic expressions, by using various operators to combine smaller expressions. grep understands two different versions of regular expression syntax: "basic"(BRE) and "extended"(ERE). In GNU grep, there is no difference in available functionality using either syntax. In other implementations, basic regular expressions are less powerful. The following description applies to extended regular expressions; differences for basic regular expressions are summarized afterwards.

The fundamental building blocks are the regular expressions that match a single character. Most characters, including all letters and digits, are regular expressions that match themselves. Any metacharacter with special meaning may be quoted by preceding it with a backslash.

A regular expression may be followed by one of several repetition operators:

`.'

The period `.' matches any single character.

`?'

The preceding item is optional and will be matched at most once.

`*'

The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.

`+'

The preceding item will be matched one or more times.

`{n}'

The preceding item is matched exactly n times.

`{n,}'

The preceding item is matched n or more times.

`{n,m}'

The preceding item is matched at least n times, but not more than m times.

Two regular expressions may be concatenated; the resulting regular expression matches any string formed by concatenating two substrings that respectively match the concatenated subexpressions.

Two regular expressions may be joined by the infix operator `|'; the resulting regular expression matches any string matching either subexpression.

Repetition takes precedence over concatenation, which in turn takes precedence over alternation. A whole subexpression may be enclosed in parentheses to override these precedence rules.