Regular Expression Evaluator
A regular expression evaluator is provided in SmartBatch to help you create regular expressions. This window is available by clicking on the Evaluate button displayed adjacent to fields that supports regular expression values.
The following picture shows the Regular Expression Evaluator window. You can click on "hot spot" areas in the picture below to get detailed information about buttons, controls and fields.
Regular Expression Meta Characters
The following table provides a list of common regular expression meta characters. Refer to MSDN or use a Google search on the internet to find many examples complete documentation on regular expressions:
Meta Character |
Character Name |
Description |
$ |
dollar sign |
Matches at the end of a string. |
( ) |
parenthesis |
Marks the beginning and end of a subexpression. |
* |
asterisk |
Matches the preceding character zero or more times. |
+ |
plus |
Matches the preceding character one or more times. |
. |
period |
Matches any single character. |
[ ] |
square brackets |
Marks the beginning of a bracket expression. |
? |
question mark |
Matches the preceding character zero or one time. |
\ |
back slash |
Marks the next character as either a special character, a literal or an octal escape. |
/ |
forward slash |
Denotes the start or end of a literal regular expression. |
^ |
caret |
Matches the beginning of an input string. |
{ } |
curly braces |
Marks the beginning of a quantifier expression. |
| |
vertical bar |
Indicates an or condition or the choice between two or more items. |