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In addition to Perl regular expressions, UltraEdit supports two other "legacy" styles: a proprietary regular expression syntax and a basic Unix syntax. We typically recommend using Perl regular expressions, as these are far more powerful and robust than these two legacy styles.
| Symbol | Function |
|---|---|
| % | Matches the start of line - Indicates the search string must be at the beginning of a line but does not include any line terminator characters in the resulting string selected. |
| $ | Matches the end of line - Indicates the search string must be at the end of line but does not include any line terminator characters in the resulting string selected. |
| ? | Matches any single character except newline. |
| * | Matches any number of occurrences of any character except newline. At least one occurrence of the preceding character or one of the characters in preceding character set must be found. |
| + | Matches one or more of the preceding single character/character set. At least one occurrence of the character must be found. |
| ++ | Matches the preceding single character/character set zero or more times. |
| ^b | Matches a page break. |
| ^p | Matches a newline (CR/LF) (paragraph) (DOS Files) |
| ^r | Matches a newline (CR Only) (paragraph) (MAC Files) |
| ^n | Matches a newline (LF Only) (paragraph) (UNIX Files) |
| ^t | Matches a tab character |
| [xyz] | A character set. Matches any characters between brackets. |
| [~xyz] | A negative character set. Matches any characters NOT between brackets including newline characters. |
| ^{A^}^{B^} | Matches expression A OR B |
| ^ | Overrides the following regular expression character |
| ^(...^) | Brackets or tags an expression to use in the replace command. A regular expression may have up to 9 tagged expressions, numbered according to their order in the regular expression.
The corresponding replacement expression is ^x, for x in the range 1-9. Example: If ^(h*o^) ^(f*s^) matches "hello folks", ^2 ^1 would replace it with "folks hello". |
Note: ^ refers to the character '^' , not the Ctrl key.
Examples:
| m?n | matches "man", "men", "min" but not "moon". |
| t*t | matches "test", "tonight" and "tea time" (the "tea t" portion) but not "tea time" (newline between "tea " and "time"). |
| Te+st | matches "test", "teest", "teeeest" etc. but does not match "tst". |
| [aeiou] | matches every lowercase vowel |
| [,.?] | matches a literal ",", "." or "?". |
| [0-9a-z] | matches any digit, or lowercase letter |
| [~0-9] | matches any character except a digit (~ means NOT the following) |
You may search for an expression A or B as follows:
"^{John^}^{Tom^}"
This will search for an occurrence of John or Tom. There should be nothing between the two expressions.
You may combine A or B and C or D in the same search as follows:
"^{John^}^{Tom^} ^{Smith^}^{Jones^}"
This will search for John or Tom followed by Smith or Jones.
| Symbol | Function |
|---|---|
| \ | Indicates the next character has a special meaning. "n" on it's own matches the character "n". "\n" matches a linefeed or newline character. See examples below (\d, \f, \n etc). |
| ^ | Matches/anchors the beginning of line. |
| $ | Matches/anchors the end of line. |
| * | Matches the preceding single character/character set zero or more times. |
| + | Matches one or more of the preceding single character/character set. At least one occurrence of the preceding character or one of the characters in preceding character set must be found. |
| . | Matches any single character except a newline character. Does not match repeated newlines. |
| (expression) | Brackets or tags an expression to use in the replace command. A regular expression may have up to 9 tagged expressions, numbered according to their order in the regular expression.
The corresponding replacement expression is \x, for x in the range 1-9. Example: If (h.*o) (f.*s) matches "hello folks", \2 \1 would replace it with "folks hello". |
| [xyz] | A character set. Matches any characters between brackets. |
| [^xyz] | A negative character set. Matches any characters NOT between brackets including newline characters. |
| \d | Matches a digit character. Equivalent to [0-9]. |
| \D | Matches a nondigit character. Equivalent to [^0-9]. |
| \f | Matches a form-feed character. |
| \n | Matches a linefeed character. |
| \r | Matches a carriage return character. |
| \s | Matches any whitespace including space, tab, form-feed, etc but not newline. |
| \S | Matches any non-whitespace character but not newline. |
| \t | Matches a tab character. |
| \v | Matches a vertical tab character. |
| \w | Matches any alphanumeric character including underscore. |
| \W | Matches any character except alphanumeric characters and underscore. |
| \p | Matches CR/LF (same as \r\n) to match a DOS line terminator. |
Note: ^ refers to the character '^' , not the Ctrl key.
Examples:
| m.n | matches "man", "men", "min" but not "moon". |
| Te+st | matches "test", "teest", "teeeest" etc. BUT NOT "tst". |
| Te*st | matches "test", "teest", "teeeest" etc. AND "tst". |
| [aeiou] | matches every lowercase vowel |
| [,.?] | matches a literal ",", "." or "?". |
| [0-9a-z] | matches any digit, or lowercase letter |
| [^0-9] | matches any character except a digit (^ means NOT the following) |
You may search for an expression A or B as follows:
"(John|Tom)"
This will search for an occurrence of John or Tom. There should be nothing between the two expressions.
You may combine A or B and C or D in the same search as follows:
"(John|Tom) (Smith|Jones)"
This will search for John or Tom followed by Smith or Jones.
If regular expressions aren't enabled for a find/replace, the following special characters are also valid in the Find and Replace fields:
| Notation | Represents |
|---|---|
| ^t | Tab character |
| ^p | New line (DOS files - CR/LF, or hex 0D 0A) |
| ^r | Carriage return (hex 0D) |
| ^n | Line feed (new line in Unix based text files) (hex 0A) |
| ^b | Line break |
| ^s | Selected text |
| ^c | Clipboard contents (up to 30,000 characters) |
| ^^ | Literal "^" character |
Note: ^ refers to the character '^' , not the Ctrl key.
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