sed & awk, 2nd Edition

I Never Metacharacter I Didn’t Like

Table 3.4 lists interesting examples of regular expressions, many of which have been described in this chapter.

Table 3.4. Useful Regular Expressions

Item	Regular Expression
Postal Abbreviation for State	□[A-Z][A-Z]□
City, State	^.*,□[A-Z][A-Z]
City, State, Zip (POSIX egrep)	^.*,□[A-Z][A-Z]□[0-9]{5}(-[0-9]{4})?
Month, Day, Year	[A-Z][a-z]\{3,9\}□[0-9]\{1,2\},□[0-9]\{4\}
U.S. Social Security Number	[0-9]\{3\}-[0-9]\{2\}-[0-9]\{4\}
North-American Local Telephone	[0-9]\{3\}-[0-9]\{4\}
Formatted Dollar Amounts	\$[□0-9]*\.[0-9][0-9]
troff In-line Font Requests	\\f[(BIRP]C*[BW]*
troff Requests	^\.[a-z]\{2\}
troff Macros	^\.[A-Z12].
troff Macro with arguments	^\.[A-Z12].□”.*”
HTML In-line Codes	<[^>]*>
Ventura Publisher Style Codes	^@.*□=□.*
Match blank lines	^$
Match entire line	^.*$
Match one or more spaces	□□*