
Contents > Developing ColdFusion MX Applications > Using Regular Expressions in Functions > Regular expression syntax > Using character sets

Using character sets

The pattern within the square brackets of a regular expression defines a character set that is used to match a single character. For example, the regular expression " [A-Za-z] " specifies to match any single uppercase or lowercase letter enclosed by spaces. In the character set, a hyphen indicates a range of characters.

The regular expression " B[IAU]G " matches the strings " BIG ", " BAG ", and " BUG ", but does not match the string " BOG ".

If you specified the regular expression as " B[IA][GN] ", the concatenation of character sets creates a regular expression that matches the corresponding concatenation of characters in the search string. This regular expression matches a space, followed by "B", followed by an "I" or "A", followed by a "G" or "N", followed by a trailing space. The regular expression matches " BIG ", " BAG ", "BIN ", and "BAN ".

The regular expression [A-Z][a-z]* matches any word that starts with an uppercase letter and is followed by zero or more lowercase letters. The special character * after the closing square bracket specifies to match zero or more occurrences of the character set.

Note: The * only applies to the character set that immediately precedes it, not to the entire regular expression.

A + after the closing square bracket specifies to find one or more occurrences of the character set. You interpret the regular expression " [A-Z]+ " as matching one or more uppercase letters enclosed by spaces. Therefore, this regular expression matches " BIG " and also matches " LARGE ", " HUGE ", " ENORMOUS ", and any other string of uppercase letters surrounded by spaces.


Contents > Developing ColdFusion MX Applications > Using Regular Expressions in Functions > Regular expression syntax > Using character sets

Version 6.1

Comments are no longer accepted for ColdFusion MX 6.1. ColdFusion 8 is the current version.

Send me an e-mail when comments are added to this page | Comment Report

Current page: http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/6.1/htmldocs/regexp6.htm