Appendix A. Regular Expression Overview

Regular expressions, also referred to as regex, are a way for computer languages to match strings of text, such as specific characters, words, or patterns of characters. A simple everyday example of regular expressions is using wildcards for matching filenames on your computer. For example, *.pdf matches all filenames that end in .pdf. However, regex can be much more powerful (and complex) than this.

Within Google Analytics, regular expressions are primarily used when creating profile filters (Chapter 8, "Best-Practices Configuration Guide"), advanced segments (Chapter 8), and table filters (Chapter 4, "Using the Google Analytics Interface").

Note

This appendix is intended as a general introduction to the fundamentals ...

Get Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics™, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.