Regular Expression Basic Concepts

Metacharacters Defined
MChar	Definition
^	Start of a string.
$	End of a string.
.	Any character (except \n newline)
|	Alternation.
{...}	Explicit quantifier notation.
[...]	Explicit set of characters to match.
(...)	Logical grouping of part of an expression.
*	0 or more of previous expression.
+	1 or more of previous expression.
?	0 or 1 of previous expression; also forces minimal matching when an expression might match several strings within a search string.
\	Preceding one of the above, it makes it a literal instead of a special character. Preceding a special matching character, see below.