Regular Expression Language Elements

The Microsoft .NET Framework SDK provides an extensive set of regular expression tools that enable you to efficiently create, compare, and modify strings as well as rapidly parse large amounts of text and data to search for, remove, and replace text patterns.

This section details the set of characters, operators, and constructs that you can use to define regular expressions.

In This Section

  • Character Escapes
    Provides information on the set of escape characters that signal to the regular expression parser that the character is not an operator and should be interpreted as a matching character.
  • Substitutions
    Provides information on the special constructs used in replacement patterns.
  • Character Classes
    Provides information on the set of regular expression characters that define the substring to match.
  • Regular Expression Options
    Provides information on the set of options that modify a regular expression pattern's matching behavior.
  • Atomic Zero-Width Assertions
    Provides information on zero-width assertions that cause a match to succeed or fail depending on the regular expression parser's current position in the input string.
  • Quantifiers
    Provides information on optional quantity data that modify a regular expression.
  • Grouping Constructs
    Provides information on grouping constructs that cause a regular expression to capture groups of subexpressions.
  • Backreference Constructs
    Provides information on regular expression backreference modifiers.
  • Alternation Constructs
    Provides information on alternation information that modifies a regular expression to allow either/or matching.
  • Miscellaneous Constructs
    Provides information on miscellaneous constructs that modify regular expression matching behavior.