In article ,
Bob Fry wrote:

"SH" == Steve Hix writes:
SH In this case, MT-NewsWatcher defines "." as "any single
SH character", and ".*" means "one or more characters"

If that's true, it's not canonical regular expressions. "*"
(asterisk) should mean "0 to many of the preceding character".

It does, in spite of me.

"+" means "1 to many of the preceding character".

Rather than depend on my rapidly-aging memory...

Description Symbol Meaning
asterisk * match zero or more times
plus sign + match one or more times
question mark ? match zero or one time
backslash \ escape the following character
period . match any one character
caret ^ negate a match in [], or start of line
square brackets character class
parentheses grouping
dollar sign $ end of line
ampersand & and
or sign | or


Which explains my reluctance to do this sort of thing without the
reference close to hand.