Sublime Text Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

Sublime Text Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

A cheat sheet about regular expressions used in Sublime Text.

Special characters

expression Description
. Match any character
^ Match line begin
$ Match line end
* Match previous RE 0 or more times greedily
*? Match previous RE 0 or more times non-greedily
+ Match previous RE 1 or more times greedily
+? Match previous RE 1 or more times non-greedily
? Match previous RE 0 or 1 time greedily
?? Match previous RE 0 or 1 time non-greedily
A|B Match either RE A or B
{m} Match previous RE exactly m times
{m,n} Match previous RE m to n times greedily
{m, n}? Match previous RE m to n times, non-greedily

Character set

expression Description
[abc] Match either a, b or c
[^abc] Match any character not in this set (i.e., not a, b and c)
[a-z] Match the range from a to z
[a-f2-8] Match the range from a to f or the range from 2 to 8
[a\-z] Match a, - or z
[a-] Match a, -
[-a] Match -, a
[{}*|()[]+\^$.?] Match either one of the chacters in []{}*|()+^$?.
  • Note that you can also use character class inside [], for example, [\w] matches any character in word character class.

Character class

“Multiple character” character class

An expression of the form [[:name:]] matches the named character class name.

class name Description
alnum Any alpha-numeric character
alpha Any alphabetic character.
digit Any decimal digit.
xdigit Any hexadecimal digit character.
lower Any lower case character.
upper Any upper case character.
cntrl Any control character1.
print Any printable character.
punct Any punctuation character. 2
space Any whitespace character. 3
word Any word character (alphanumeric characters plus the underscore).

Note: To use upper and lower, you have to enable case sensitve search.

“Single character” character class

class name Description
\d Equal to [[:digit:]]
\l Equal to [[:lower:]]
\u Equal to [[:upper:]]
\s Equal to [[:space:]]
\w Equal to [[:word:]]
\D Equal to [^[:digit:]]
\L Equal to [^[:lower:]]
\U Equal to [^[:upper:]]
\W Equal to [^[:word:]]

Regex groups

Defining capture groups

expression Description
(?<NAME>pattern) Define a regex group named NAME which you can later refer to with \g{NAME}
(?=pattern) Positive lookahead, consumes zero characters, the preceding RE only matches if this matches
(?!pattern) Negative lookahead, consumes zero characters, the preceding RE only matches if this does not match
(?<=pattern) Positive lookbehind, consumes zero characters, the following RE will only match if preceded with this fixed length RE.
(?<!pattern) Negative lookbehind, consumes zero characters, the following RE will only match if not preceded with this fixed length RE.

Refering to matching groups (capture groups)

expression Description
\1 Refer to first regex group
\g{1} Refer to first regex group
\g{12} Refer to 12th regex group
\g{-1} Refer to last regex group
\g{-2} Refer to last but one regex group
  • The regex groups are indexed by the order of their opening braces.
  • Note the \g{NUM} form allows for matching regex group index larger than 9, for example, \g{12}.

Miscellaneous

Escapes

class name Description
\xdd A hexadecimal escape sequence - matches the single character whose code point is 0xdd.
\x{dddd} A hexadecimal escape sequence - matches the single character whose code point is 0xdddd.

Word boundaries

The following escape sequences match the boundaries of words:

class name Description
\< Matches the start of a word.
\> Matches the end of a word.
\b Matches a word boundary (the start or end of a word).
\B Matches only when not at a word boundary.

References

The title image is taken from here.