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ABAP Keyword Documentation →  ABAP - Reference →  Processing Internal Data →  Character String and Byte String Processing →  Expressions and Functions for String Processing →  Regular Expressions →  Syntax of Regular Expressions 

Special Characters in Regular Expressions

The following tables summarize the special characters in regular expressions:

Other versions: 7.31 | 7.40 | 7.54

Escape Character

Special character Meaning
\ Escape character for special characters


Note

With the escape character string, all special characters for regular expressions can come before their escape characters.

Special Characters for Single Character Strings

Special character Meaning
. Placeholder for any single character
\C Placeholder for any single character
\d Placeholder for any single digit
\D Placeholder for any character other than a digit
\l Placeholder for any lowercase letter
\L Placeholder for any character other than a lowercase letter
\s Placeholder for a blank character
\S Placeholder for any character other than a blank character
\u Placeholder for any uppercase letter
\U Placeholder for any character other than an uppercase letter
\w Placeholder for any alphanumeric character including _
\W Placeholder for any non-alphanumeric character except for _
[ ] Definition of a value set for single characters
[^ ] Negation of a value set for single characters
[ - ] Definition of a range in a value set for single characters
[[:alnum:]] Description of all alphanumeric characters in a value set
[[:alpha:]] Description of all letters in a value set
[[:blank:]] Description for blank characters and horizontal tabulators in a value set
[[:cntrl:]] Description of all control characters in a value set
[[:digit:]] Description of all digits in a value set
[[:graph:]] Description of all characters in a value set that can be displayed apart from blank characters and horizontal tabulators
[[:lower:]] Description of all lowercase letters in a value set
[[:print:]] Description of all characters in a value set that can be displayed
[[:punct:]] Description of all punctuation characters in a value set
[[:space:]] Description of all blank characters, tabulators, and carriage feeds in a value set
[[:unicode:]] Description of all Unicode characters in a value set with a code larger than 255
[[:upper:]] Description of all uppercase letters in a value set
[[:word:]] Description of all alphanumeric characters in a value set, including _
[[:xdigit:]] Description of all hexadecimal digits in a value set
\a \f \n \r \t \v Various platform-specific control characters
[..] Reserved for later enhancements
[==] Reserved for later enhancements

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Special Characters for Character String Patterns

Special character Meaning
Concatenation of n single characters
Concatenation of at least n and a maximum of m single characters
Reserved for later enhancements
? One or no single characters
* Concatenation of any number of single characters including 'no characters'
*? Reserved for later enhancements
+ Concatenation of any number of single characters excluding 'no characters'
+? Reserved for later enhancements
( ) Definition of subgroups with registration
(?: ) Definition of subgroups without registration
\1, \2, \3 ... Placeholder for the register of subgroups
\Q ... \E Definition of a string of literal characters
(? ... ) Reserved for later enhancements

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Special Characters for Search Strings

Special character Meaning
^ Anchor character for the start of a line
\A Anchor character for the start of a character string
$ Anchor character for the end of a line
\z Anchor character for the end of a character string
\Z Like \z, whereby line breaks at the end of the character string are ignored
\< Start of a word
\> End of a word
\b Start or end of a word
\B Space between characters within a word
(?= ) Preview condition
(?! ) Negated preview condition
(?> ) Cut operator

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Special Characters for Replacement Texts

Special character Meaning
$0, $& Placeholder for the whole found location
$1, $2, $3... Placeholder for the register of subgroups
$` Placeholder for the text before the found location
$' Placeholder for the text after the found location

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