Summary of Pattern Elements

• ‘^’ Matches the null string at the beginning of a line. However, if not the first element of a pattern, is treated as a literal caret.
• ‘.’ Matches any single character other than newline.
• ‘$’ Matches the newline character at the end of a line. However, if not the last element of a pattern, is treated as a literal dollar sign.
• ‘[<ccl>]’ Matches any single character that is a member of the set specified by <ccl>. <Ccl> may be composed of single characters or of character ranges of the form <c1>-<c2>. If character ranges are used, <c1> and <c2> must both belong to the digits, the upper case alphabet or the lower case alphabet.
• ‘[^<ccl>]’ Matches any single character that is not a member of the set specified by <ccl>.
• ‘*’ In combination with the immediately preceding pattern element, matches zero or more characters that are matched by that pattern element.