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From: Jim Janney <jjanney@shell.xmission.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: regex reserved chars
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:47:55 -0700
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Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> writes:

> On Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:18:19 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>
>> On 2/6/2013 7:28 PM, Roedy Green wrote:
>>> I have always treated $ ( ) * + -. ? [ \ ] ^ { | }
>>> as reserved regex chars.
>>> I can't find any docs that say the list is different inside[  ].
>>> is it?
>> 
>> Typical it is.
>> 
>> Regex syntax vary a bit between implementations.
>> 
>> So one should study the documentation.
>> 
>> java.util.regex.Pattern has an excellent JavaDoc.
>>
> That's normally the first place I look, but it doesn't answer Roedy's 
> question - apart, that is, from referring to the dead tree O'Reilly book. 
> Expanding the 'Character Classes' description in the Pattern class-level 
> documentation or linking to an online source would be more useful than 
> the implied suggestion of buying the book from Amazon and then waiting 
> for delivery.

I have a copy of that book, in an earlier edition, but I usually find it
more convenient to consult regular-expressions.info, e.g.

    http://www.regular-expressions.info/charclass.html

which answers the question very nicely.  It also explains things like
lookbehind that the JavaDoc only hints at.

-- 
Jim Janney