User Guide

Regular expression syntax 149
The following table lists the escape sequences that ColdFusion supports:
Using character classes
In character sets within regular expressions, you can include a character class. You enclose the
character class inside square brackets, as the following example shows:
REReplace ("Macromedia Web Site","[[:space:]]","*","ALL")
Escape
Sequence
Description
\b Specifies a boundary defined by a transition from an alphanumeric character to a
nonalphanumeric character, or from a nonalphanumeric character to an alphanumeric
character.
For example, the string " Big" contains boundary defined by the space
(nonalphanumeric character) and the "B" (alphanumeric character).
The following example uses the \b escape sequence in a regular expression to locate
the string "Big" at the end of the search string and not the fragment "big" inside the
word "ambiguous".
reFindNoCase("\bBig\b", "Don’t be ambiguous about Big.")
<!--- The value of IndexOfOccurrence is 26 --->
When used inside of a character set (e.g. [\b]), it specifies a backspace
\B Specifies a boundary defined by no transition of character type. For example, two
alphanumeric character in a row or two nonalphanumeric character in a row; opposite of
\b.
\A Specifies a beginning of string anchor, much like the ^ special character.
However, unlike ^, you cannot combine \A with (?m) to specify the start of newlines in
the search string.
\Z Specifies an end of string anchor, much like the $ special character.
However, unlike $, you cannot combine \Z with (?m) to specify the end of newlines in
the search string.
\n Newline character
\r Carriage return
\t Tab
\f Form feed
\d Any digit, similar to [0-9]
\D Any nondigit character, similar to [^0-9]
\w Any alphanumeric character, similar to [[:alnum:]]
\W Any nonalphanumeric character, similar to [^[:alnum:]]
\s Any whitespace character including tab, space, newline, carriage return, and form feed.
Similar to [ \t\n\r\f].
\S Any nonwhitespace character, similar to [^ \t\n\r\f]
\xdd A hexadecimal representation of character, where d is a hexadecimal digit
\ddd An octal representation of a character, where d is an octal digit, in the form \000 to \377