Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 6th Edition

Appendix A. Regular Expression Metacharacters and Function Parameters

This appendix describes the various regular expression metacharacters available starting with Oracle Database 10g. It also provides a summary of the syntax of the REGEXP_ functions. For more details on Oracle’s regular expression support, see Chapter 8.

Metacharacters

The “Initial release” column in Table A-1 through Table A-3 indicates which metacharacters were introduced in Oracle Database 10g Release 1 and which in Release 2.

Table A-1. Character-matching metacharacters

Syntax	Initial release	Description
.	10gR1	Matches any single character except for newline. Will match newline when the n flag is set. On Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms, chr(10) is recognized as the newline.
[ ... ]	10gR1	Defines a matching list that matches any character listed between the brackets. You may specify ranges of characters, as in a–z. These ranges are interpreted based on the NLS_SORT setting. A dash (-) is a literal when it occurs first or last in the list (e.g., [abc-]). A closing bracket (]) is a literal when it occurs first in the list (e.g., []abc]). A caret (^) in the first position makes the list a nonmatching list (see the next entry).
[^ ... ]	10gR1	Matches any character not listed between the brackets. Referred to as a nonmatching list.
[:class:]	10gR1	Matches any character that belongs to the specified character class. May only be used within a matching list: [[:class:]abc] is a valid expression, but [:class:]abc is not. Table A-5 ...