7.9. Useful Escape Sequences
Perl has several escape sequences which are specific to regular expressions.
Here is a list of some of the more useful ones:
-
\w - matches a word character, equivalent to [A-Za-z_]. The
corresponding sequence - \W matches a non-word character.
-
\s - matches a whitespace character, usually space and tab. \S
matches a non-whitespace character.
-
\d - matches a digit. Equivalent to [0-9]. \D matches a
non-digit.
-
\b - matches a word boundary. This sequence in fact has a zero width
but it is nevertheless highly useful. \B matches something that is not
a word boundary.
Written by Shlomi Fish