The AwkSyntax
structure implements the AWK syntax for regular expressions.
The syntax is defined on pp. 28-30 of The AWK Programming Language,
by Aho, Kernighan and Weinberger. The syntax has been extended with interval
syntax, which was added as part of the POSIX standard.
Synopsis
structure AwkSyntax : REGEXP_PARSER
Description
The meta characters are: "\" "^" "$" "." "[" "]" "|" "(" ")" "*" "+" "?"
Atomic REs: c matches the character c (for non-metacharacters c) "^" matches the empty string at the beginning of a line "$" matches the empty string at the end of a line "." matches any single character (except \000 and \n)
Escape sequences: "\b" matches backspace "\f" matches formfeed "\n" matches newline (linefeed) "\r" matches carriage return "\t" matches tab "\"ddd matches the character with octal code ddd. "\"c matches the character c (e.g., \\ for \, \" for ") "\x"dd matches the character with hex code dd.
Character classes: [...] matches any character in "..." [^...] a complemented character list, which matches any character not in the list "..."
Compound regular expressions, where A and B are REs: A|B matches A or B AB matches A followed by B A? matches zero or one As A* matches zero or more As A+ matches one or more As A{n} matches n copies of A A{n,} matches n or more copies of A A{n,m} matches from n to m copies of A (A) matches A