perlrecharclass - Perl Regular Expression Character Classes
The top level documentation about Perl regular expressions is found in perlre.
This manual page discusses the syntax and use of character classes in Perl Regular Expressions.
A character class is a way of denoting a set of characters, in such a way that one character of the set is matched. It's important to remember that matching a character class consumes exactly one character in the source string. (The source string is the string the regular expression is matched against.)
There are three types of character classes in Perl regular expressions: the dot, backslashed sequences, and the form enclosed in square brackets. Keep in mind, though, that often the term "character class" is used to mean just the bracketed form. This is true in other Perl documentation.
The dot (or period), . is probably the most used, and certainly
the most well-known character class. By default, a dot matches any
character, except for the newline. The default can be changed to
add matching the newline with the single line modifier: either
for the entire regular expression using the /s modifier, or
locally using (?s).
Here are some examples:
- "a" =~ /./ # Match
- "." =~ /./ # Match
- "" =~ /./ # No match (dot has to match a character)
- "\n" =~ /./ # No match (dot does not match a newline)
- "\n" =~ /./s # Match (global 'single line' modifier)
- "\n" =~ /(?s:.)/ # Match (local 'single line' modifier)
- "ab" =~ /^.$/ # No match (dot matches one character)
Perl regular expressions contain many backslashed sequences that constitute a character class. That is, they will match a single character, if that character belongs to a specific set of characters (defined by the sequence). A backslashed sequence is a sequence of characters starting with a backslash. Not all backslashed sequences are character classes; for a full list, see perlrebackslash.
Here's a list of the backslashed sequences that are character classes. They are discussed in more detail below.
- \d Match a digit character.
- \D Match a non-digit character.
- \w Match a "word" character.
- \W Match a non-"word" character.
- \s Match a whitespace character.
- \S Match a non-whitespace character.
- \h Match a horizontal whitespace character.
- \H Match a character that isn't horizontal whitespace.
- \N Match a character that isn't newline. Experimental.
- \v Match a vertical whitespace character.
- \V Match a character that isn't vertical whitespace.
- \pP, \p{Prop} Match a character matching a Unicode property.
- \PP, \P{Prop} Match a character that doesn't match a Unicode property.
\d
matches a single character that is considered to be a digit. What is
considered a digit depends on the internal encoding of the source string and
the locale that is in effect. If the source string is in UTF-8 format, \d
not only matches the digits '0' - '9', but also Arabic, Devanagari and digits
from other languages. Otherwise, if there is a locale in effect, it will match
whatever characters the locale considers digits. Without a locale, \d
matches the digits '0' to '9'. See Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8.
Any character that isn't matched by \d
will be matched by \D
.
A \w
matches a single alphanumeric character (an alphabetic character, or a
decimal digit) or an underscore (_
), not a whole word. Use \w+
to match
a string of Perl-identifier characters (which isn't the same as matching an
English word). What is considered a word character depends on the internal
encoding of the string and the locale or EBCDIC code page that is in effect. If
it's in UTF-8 format, \w
matches those characters that are considered word
characters in the Unicode database. That is, it not only matches ASCII letters,
but also Thai letters, Greek letters, etc. If the source string isn't in UTF-8
format, \w
matches those characters that are considered word characters by
the current locale or EBCDIC code page. Without a locale or EBCDIC code page,
\w
matches the ASCII letters, digits and the underscore.
See Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8.
Any character that isn't matched by \w
will be matched by \W
.
\s matches any single character that is considered whitespace. In the ASCII
range, \s matches the horizontal tab (\t
), the new line (\n
), the form
feed (\f
), the carriage return (\r
), and the space. (The vertical tab,
\cK
is not matched by \s.) The exact set of characters matched by \s
depends on whether the source string is in UTF-8 format and the locale or
EBCDIC code page that is in effect. If it's in UTF-8 format, \s matches what
is considered whitespace in the Unicode database; the complete list is in the
table below. Otherwise, if there is a locale or EBCDIC code page in effect,
\s matches whatever is considered whitespace by the current locale or EBCDIC
code page. Without a locale or EBCDIC code page, \s matches the five
characters mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph. Perhaps the most
notable possible surprise is that \s matches a non-breaking space only if
the non-breaking space is in a UTF-8 encoded string or the locale or EBCDIC
code page that is in effect has that character.
See Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8.
Any character that isn't matched by \s will be matched by \S
.
\h
will match any character that is considered horizontal whitespace;
this includes the space and the tab characters and 17 other characters that are
listed in the table below. \H
will match any character
that is not considered horizontal whitespace.
\N
is new in 5.12, and is experimental. It, like the dot, will match any
character that is not a newline. The difference is that \N
will not be
influenced by the single line /s regular expression modifier. Note that
there is a second meaning of \N
when of the form \N{...}
. This form is
for named characters. See charnames for those. If \N
is followed by an
opening brace and something that is not a quantifier, perl will assume that a
character name is coming, and not this meaning of \N
. For example, \N{3}
means to match 3 non-newlines; \N{5,}
means to match 5 or more non-newlines,
but \N{4F} and \N{F4}
are not legal quantifiers, and will cause perl to
look for characters named 4F or F4
, respectively (and won't find them,
thus raising an error, unless they have been defined using custom names).
\v
will match any character that is considered vertical whitespace;
this includes the carriage return and line feed characters (newline) plus 5
other characters listed in the table below.
\V
will match any character that is not considered vertical whitespace.
\R
matches anything that can be considered a newline under Unicode
rules. It's not a character class, as it can match a multi-character
sequence. Therefore, it cannot be used inside a bracketed character
class; use \v
instead (vertical whitespace).
Details are discussed in perlrebackslash.
Note that unlike \s, \d
and \w
, \h
and \v
always match
the same characters, regardless whether the source string is in UTF-8
format or not. The set of characters they match is also not influenced
by locale nor EBCDIC code page.
One might think that \s is equivalent to [\h\v]
. This is not true. The
vertical tab ("\x0b"
) is not matched by \s, it is however considered
vertical whitespace. Furthermore, if the source string is not in UTF-8 format,
and any locale or EBCDIC code page that is in effect doesn't include them, the
next line ("\x85"
) and the no-break space ("\xA0"
) characters are not
matched by \s, but are by \v
and \h
respectively. If the source
string is in UTF-8 format, both the next line and the no-break space are
matched by \s.
The following table is a complete listing of characters matched by
\s, \h
and \v
as of Unicode 5.2.
The first column gives the code point of the character (in hex format),
the second column gives the (Unicode) name. The third column indicates
by which class(es) the character is matched (assuming no locale or EBCDIC code
page is in effect that changes the \s matching).
- 0x00009 CHARACTER TABULATION h s
- 0x0000a LINE FEED (LF) vs
- 0x0000b LINE TABULATION v
- 0x0000c FORM FEED (FF) vs
- 0x0000d CARRIAGE RETURN (CR) vs
- 0x00020 SPACE h s
- 0x00085 NEXT LINE (NEL) vs [1]
- 0x000a0 NO-BREAK SPACE h s [1]
- 0x01680 OGHAM SPACE MARK h s
- 0x0180e MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR h s
- 0x02000 EN QUAD h s
- 0x02001 EM QUAD h s
- 0x02002 EN SPACE h s
- 0x02003 EM SPACE h s
- 0x02004 THREE-PER-EM SPACE h s
- 0x02005 FOUR-PER-EM SPACE h s
- 0x02006 SIX-PER-EM SPACE h s
- 0x02007 FIGURE SPACE h s
- 0x02008 PUNCTUATION SPACE h s
- 0x02009 THIN SPACE h s
- 0x0200a HAIR SPACE h s
- 0x02028 LINE SEPARATOR vs
- 0x02029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR vs
- 0x0202f NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE h s
- 0x0205f MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE h s
- 0x03000 IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE h s
NEXT LINE and NO-BREAK SPACE only match \s if the source string is in
UTF-8 format, or the locale or EBCDIC code page that is in effect includes them.
It is worth noting that \d
, \w
, etc, match single characters, not
complete numbers or words. To match a number (that consists of integers),
use \d+
; to match a word, use \w+
.
\pP
and \p{Prop}
are character classes to match characters that fit given
Unicode properties. One letter property names can be used in the \pP
form,
with the property name following the \p
, otherwise, braces are required.
When using braces, there is a single form, which is just the property name
enclosed in the braces, and a compound form which looks like \p{name=value}
,
which means to match if the property "name" for the character has the particular
"value".
For instance, a match for a number can be written as /\pN/
or as
/\p{Number}/
, or as /\p{Number=True}/
.
Lowercase letters are matched by the property Lowercase_Letter which
has as short form Ll. They need the braces, so are written as /\p{Ll}/
or
/\p{Lowercase_Letter}/
, or /\p{General_Category=Lowercase_Letter}/
(the underscores are optional).
/\pLl/
is valid, but means something different.
It matches a two character string: a letter (Unicode property \pL
),
followed by a lowercase l
.
For more details, see Unicode Character Properties in perlunicode; for a complete list of possible properties, see Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{} in perluniprops. It is also possible to define your own properties. This is discussed in User-Defined Character Properties in perlunicode.
- "a" =~ /\w/ # Match, "a" is a 'word' character.
- "7" =~ /\w/ # Match, "7" is a 'word' character as well.
- "a" =~ /\d/ # No match, "a" isn't a digit.
- "7" =~ /\d/ # Match, "7" is a digit.
- " " =~ /\s/ # Match, a space is whitespace.
- "a" =~ /\D/ # Match, "a" is a non-digit.
- "7" =~ /\D/ # No match, "7" is not a non-digit.
- " " =~ /\S/ # No match, a space is not non-whitespace.
- " " =~ /\h/ # Match, space is horizontal whitespace.
- " " =~ /\v/ # No match, space is not vertical whitespace.
- "\r" =~ /\v/ # Match, a return is vertical whitespace.
- "a" =~ /\pL/ # Match, "a" is a letter.
- "a" =~ /\p{Lu}/ # No match, /\p{Lu}/ matches upper case letters.
- "\x{0e0b}" =~ /\p{Thai}/ # Match, \x{0e0b} is the character
- # 'THAI CHARACTER SO SO', and that's in
- # Thai Unicode class.
- "a" =~ /\P{Lao}/ # Match, as "a" is not a Laotian character.
The third form of character class you can use in Perl regular expressions
is the bracketed form. In its simplest form, it lists the characters
that may be matched, surrounded by square brackets, like this: [aeiou]
.
This matches one of a
, e
, i
, o
or u
. Like the other
character classes, exactly one character will be matched. To match
a longer string consisting of characters mentioned in the character
class, follow the character class with a quantifier. For instance,
[aeiou]+
matches a string of one or more lowercase ASCII vowels.
Repeating a character in a character class has no effect; it's considered to be in the set only once.
Examples:
- "e" =~ /[aeiou]/ # Match, as "e" is listed in the class.
- "p" =~ /[aeiou]/ # No match, "p" is not listed in the class.
- "ae" =~ /^[aeiou]$/ # No match, a character class only matches
- # a single character.
- "ae" =~ /^[aeiou]+$/ # Match, due to the quantifier.
Most characters that are meta characters in regular expressions (that
is, characters that carry a special meaning like ., *
, or () lose
their special meaning and can be used inside a character class without
the need to escape them. For instance, [()]
matches either an opening
parenthesis, or a closing parenthesis, and the parens inside the character
class don't group or capture.
Characters that may carry a special meaning inside a character class are:
\
, ^, -
, [ and ], and are discussed below. They can be
escaped with a backslash, although this is sometimes not needed, in which
case the backslash may be omitted.
The sequence \b
is special inside a bracketed character class. While
outside the character class \b
is an assertion indicating a point
that does not have either two word characters or two non-word characters
on either side, inside a bracketed character class, \b
matches a
backspace character.
The sequences
\a
,
\c
,
\e
,
\f
,
\n
,
\N{NAME},
\N{U+wide hex char},
\r
,
\t
,
and
\x
are also special and have the same meanings as they do outside a bracketed character
class.
Also, a backslash followed by two or three octal digits is considered an octal number.
A [ is not special inside a character class, unless it's the start
of a POSIX character class (see below). It normally does not need escaping.
A ] is normally either the end of a POSIX character class (see below), or it
signals the end of the bracketed character class. If you want to include a
] in the set of characters, you must generally escape it.
However, if the ] is the first (or the second if the first
character is a caret) character of a bracketed character class, it
does not denote the end of the class (as you cannot have an empty class)
and is considered part of the set of characters that can be matched without
escaping.
Examples:
- "+" =~ /[+?*]/ # Match, "+" in a character class is not special.
- "\cH" =~ /[\b]/ # Match, \b inside in a character class
- # is equivalent to a backspace.
- "]" =~ /[][]/ # Match, as the character class contains.
- # both [ and ].
- "[]" =~ /[[]]/ # Match, the pattern contains a character class
- # containing just ], and the character class is
- # followed by a ].
It is not uncommon to want to match a range of characters. Luckily, instead
of listing all the characters in the range, one may use the hyphen (-
).
If inside a bracketed character class you have two characters separated
by a hyphen, it's treated as if all the characters between the two are in
the class. For instance, [0-9]
matches any ASCII digit, and [a-m]
matches any lowercase letter from the first half of the ASCII alphabet.
Note that the two characters on either side of the hyphen are not
necessary both letters or both digits. Any character is possible,
although not advisable. ['-?] contains a range of characters, but
most people will not know which characters that will be. Furthermore,
such ranges may lead to portability problems if the code has to run on
a platform that uses a different character set, such as EBCDIC.
If a hyphen in a character class cannot syntactically be part of a range, for instance because it is the first or the last character of the character class, or if it immediately follows a range, the hyphen isn't special, and will be considered a character that may be matched literally. You have to escape the hyphen with a backslash if you want to have a hyphen in your set of characters to be matched, and its position in the class is such that it could be considered part of a range.
Examples:
- [a-z] # Matches a character that is a lower case ASCII letter.
- [a-fz] # Matches any letter between 'a' and 'f' (inclusive) or
- # the letter 'z'.
- [-z] # Matches either a hyphen ('-') or the letter 'z'.
- [a-f-m] # Matches any letter between 'a' and 'f' (inclusive), the
- # hyphen ('-'), or the letter 'm'.
- ['-?] # Matches any of the characters '()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?
- # (But not on an EBCDIC platform).
It is also possible to instead list the characters you do not want to
match. You can do so by using a caret (^) as the first character in the
character class. For instance, [^a-z] matches a character that is not a
lowercase ASCII letter.
This syntax make the caret a special character inside a bracketed character class, but only if it is the first character of the class. So if you want to have the caret as one of the characters you want to match, you either have to escape the caret, or not list it first.
Examples:
- "e" =~ /[^aeiou]/ # No match, the 'e' is listed.
- "x" =~ /[^aeiou]/ # Match, as 'x' isn't a lowercase vowel.
- "^" =~ /[^^]/ # No match, matches anything that isn't a caret.
- "^" =~ /[x^]/ # Match, caret is not special here.
You can put any backslash sequence character class (with the exception of
\N
) inside a bracketed character class, and it will act just
as if you put all the characters matched by the backslash sequence inside the
character class. For instance, [a-f\d]
will match any digit, or any of the
lowercase letters between 'a' and 'f' inclusive.
\N
within a bracketed character class must be of the forms \N{name} or
\N{U+wide hex char} for the same reason that a dot . inside a
bracketed character class loses its special meaning: it matches nearly
anything, which generally isn't what you want to happen.
Examples:
- /[\p{Thai}\d]/ # Matches a character that is either a Thai
- # character, or a digit.
- /[^\p{Arabic}()]/ # Matches a character that is neither an Arabic
- # character, nor a parenthesis.
Backslash sequence character classes cannot form one of the endpoints of a range.
Posix character classes have the form [:class:], where class is
name, and the [: and :] delimiters. Posix character classes only appear
inside bracketed character classes, and are a convenient and descriptive
way of listing a group of characters, though they currently suffer from
portability issues (see below and Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8). Be
careful about the syntax,
- # Correct:
- $string =~ /[[:alpha:]]/
- # Incorrect (will warn):
- $string =~ /[:alpha:]/
The latter pattern would be a character class consisting of a colon,
and the letters a
, l
, p
and h
.
These character classes can be part of a larger bracketed character class. For
example,
- [01[:alpha:]%]
is valid and matches '0', '1', any alphabetic character, and the percent sign.
Perl recognizes the following POSIX character classes:
- alpha Any alphabetical character ("[A-Za-z]").
- alnum Any alphanumerical character. ("[A-Za-z0-9]")
- ascii Any character in the ASCII character set.
- blank A GNU extension, equal to a space or a horizontal tab ("\t").
- cntrl Any control character. See Note [2] below.
- digit Any decimal digit ("[0-9]"), equivalent to "\d".
- graph Any printable character, excluding a space. See Note [3] below.
- lower Any lowercase character ("[a-z]").
- print Any printable character, including a space. See Note [4] below.
- punct Any graphical character excluding "word" characters. Note [5].
- space Any whitespace character. "\s" plus the vertical tab ("\cK").
- upper Any uppercase character ("[A-Z]").
- word A Perl extension ("[A-Za-z0-9_]"), equivalent to "\w".
- xdigit Any hexadecimal digit ("[0-9a-fA-F]").
Most POSIX character classes have two Unicode-style \p
property
counterparts. (They are not official Unicode properties, but Perl extensions
derived from official Unicode properties.) The table below shows the relation
between POSIX character classes and these counterparts.
One counterpart, in the column labelled "ASCII-range Unicode" in the table will only match characters in the ASCII range. (On EBCDIC platforms, they match those characters which have ASCII equivalents.)
The other counterpart, in the column labelled "Full-range Unicode", matches any
appropriate characters in the full Unicode character set. For example,
\p{Alpha}
will match not just the ASCII alphabetic characters, but any
character in the entire Unicode character set that is considered to be
alphabetic.
(Each of the counterparts has various synonyms as well.
Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{} in perluniprops lists all the
synonyms, plus all the characters matched by each of the ASCII-range
properties. For example \p{AHex}
is a synonym for \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}
,
and any \p
property name can be prefixed with "Is" such as \p{IsAlpha}
.)
Both the \p
forms are unaffected by any locale that is in effect, or whether
the string is in UTF-8 format or not, or whether the platform is EBCDIC or not.
In contrast, the POSIX character classes are affected. If the source string is
in UTF-8 format, the POSIX classes (with the exception of [[:punct:]], see
Note [5]) behave like their "Full-range" Unicode counterparts. If the source
string is not in UTF-8 format, and no locale is in effect, and the platform is
not EBCDIC, all the POSIX classes behave like their ASCII-range counterparts.
Otherwise, they behave based on the rules of the locale or EBCDIC code page.
It is proposed to change this behavior in a future release of Perl so that the
the UTF8ness of the source string will be irrelevant to the behavior of the
POSIX character classes. This means they will always behave in strict
accordance with the official POSIX standard. That is, if either locale or
EBCDIC code page is present, they will behave in accordance with those; if
absent, the classes will match only their ASCII-range counterparts. If you
disagree with this proposal, send email to perl5-porters@perl.org
.
- [[:...:]] ASCII-range Full-range backslash Note
- Unicode Unicode sequence
- -----------------------------------------------------
- alpha \p{PosixAlpha} \p{Alpha}
- alnum \p{PosixAlnum} \p{Alnum}
- ascii \p{ASCII}
- blank \p{PosixBlank} \p{Blank} = [1]
- \p{HorizSpace} \h [1]
- cntrl \p{PosixCntrl} \p{Cntrl} [2]
- digit \p{PosixDigit} \p{Digit} \d
- graph \p{PosixGraph} \p{Graph} [3]
- lower \p{PosixLower} \p{Lower}
- print \p{PosixPrint} \p{Print} [4]
- punct \p{PosixPunct} \p{Punct} [5]
- \p{PerlSpace} \p{SpacePerl} \s [6]
- space \p{PosixSpace} \p{Space} [6]
- upper \p{PosixUpper} \p{Upper}
- word \p{PerlWord} \p{Word} \w
- xdigit \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit} \p{XDigit}
\p{Blank}
and \p{HorizSpace}
are synonyms.
Control characters don't produce output as such, but instead usually control
the terminal somehow: for example newline and backspace are control characters.
In the ASCII range, characters whose ordinals are between 0 and 31 inclusive,
plus 127 (DEL
) are control characters.
On EBCDIC platforms, it is likely that the code page will define [[:cntrl:]]
to be the EBCDIC equivalents of the ASCII controls, plus the controls
that in Unicode have ordinals from 128 through 139.
Any character that is graphical, that is, visible. This class consists of all the alphanumerical characters and all punctuation characters.
All printable characters, which is the set of all the graphical characters plus whitespace characters that are not also controls.
\p{PosixPunct}
and [[:punct:]] in the ASCII range match all the
non-controls, non-alphanumeric, non-space characters:
[-!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@[\\\]^_`{|}~] (although if a locale is in effect,
it could alter the behavior of [[:punct:]]).
When the matching string is in UTF-8 format, [[:punct:]] matches the above
set, plus what \p{Punct}
matches. This is different than strictly matching
according to \p{Punct}
, because the above set includes characters that aren't
considered punctuation by Unicode, but rather "symbols". Another way to say it
is that for a UTF-8 string, [[:punct:]] matches all the characters that
Unicode considers to be punctuation, plus all the ASCII-range characters that
Unicode considers to be symbols.
\p{SpacePerl}
and \p{Space}
differ only in that \p{Space}
additionally
matches the vertical tab, \cK
. Same for the two ASCII-only range forms.
A Perl extension to the POSIX character class is the ability to
negate it. This is done by prefixing the class name with a caret (^).
Some examples:
- POSIX ASCII-range Full-range backslash
- Unicode Unicode sequence
- -----------------------------------------------------
- [[:^digit:]] \P{PosixDigit} \P{Digit} \D
- [[:^space:]] \P{PosixSpace} \P{Space}
- \P{PerlSpace} \P{SpacePerl} \S
- [[:^word:]] \P{PerlWord} \P{Word} \W
Perl will recognize the POSIX character classes [=class=]
, and
[.class.], but does not (yet?) support them. Use of
such a construct will lead to an error.
- /[[:digit:]]/ # Matches a character that is a digit.
- /[01[:lower:]]/ # Matches a character that is either a
- # lowercase letter, or '0' or '1'.
- /[[:digit:][:^xdigit:]]/ # Matches a character that can be anything
- # except the letters 'a' to 'f'. This is
- # because the main character class is composed
- # of two POSIX character classes that are ORed
- # together, one that matches any digit, and
- # the other that matches anything that isn't a
- # hex digit. The result matches all
- # characters except the letters 'a' to 'f' and
- # 'A' to 'F'.
Some of the character classes have a somewhat different behaviour depending on the internal encoding of the source string, and the locale that is in effect, and if the program is running on an EBCDIC platform.
\w
, \d
, \s and the POSIX character classes (and their negations,
including \W
, \D
, \S
) suffer from this behaviour. (Since the backslash
sequences \b
and \B
are defined in terms of \w
and \W
, they also are
affected.)
The rule is that if the source string is in UTF-8 format, the character
classes match according to the Unicode properties. If the source string
isn't, then the character classes match according to whatever locale or EBCDIC
code page is in effect. If there is no locale nor EBCDIC, they match the ASCII
defaults (52 letters, 10 digits and underscore for \w
; 0 to 9 for \d
;
etc.).
This usually means that if you are matching against characters whose ord()
values are between 128 and 255 inclusive, your character class may match
or not depending on the current locale or EBCDIC code page, and whether the
source string is in UTF-8 format. The string will be in UTF-8 format if it
contains characters whose ord() value exceeds 255. But a string may be in
UTF-8 format without it having such characters. See The Unicode Bug in perluniprops.
For portability reasons, it may be better to not use \w
, \d
, \s
or the POSIX character classes, and use the Unicode properties instead.
- $str = "\xDF"; # $str is not in UTF-8 format.
- $str =~ /^\w/; # No match, as $str isn't in UTF-8 format.
- $str .= "\x{0e0b}"; # Now $str is in UTF-8 format.
- $str =~ /^\w/; # Match! $str is now in UTF-8 format.
- chop $str;
- $str =~ /^\w/; # Still a match! $str remains in UTF-8 format.