The regular expressions accepted by the "Find/Replace" dialogs must conform to the following syntax.
Characters
| Syntax | Signification |
| x | The character x - with the exception of special characters * ? + - | () [ ] |
| \x | The character x |
Atoms
| Syntax | Signification |
| a | the character a |
| [abc] | the class formed by the characters a, b or c |
| [a-z] | all the characters from a to z |
| [a-zA-Z] | all the characters from a to z, or from A to Z |
| [^a] | any character except a |
| [^a-z] | any character except those between a and z (inclusive). |
| . | any character except the line break or carriage return (equivalent to [^\n\r]. |
Note: using parentheses or the +, ?, *, or | operators is not allowed within a character class specification.
Cardinality
| Syntax | Signification |
| X* | zero or more occurence(s) of the letter X |
| X+ | one or more occurence(s) of the letter X |
| X? | at least one occurence(s) of the letter X |
Operators
| Syntax | Signification |
| XY | X followed by Y |
| X|Y | X or Y |
Precedence rules The operators below are listed in descending order of priority :
Examples
| Example | Corresponding strings |
| foo | the string "foo" |
| a|bc | a or b, followed by c (in other words "ac" or "bc") |
| a|(bc) | the string "a" or the string "bc" |
| ab+ | the strings starting with a followed by one or more b's |
| (ab)+ | the strings "ab", "abab", "ababab", etc. |
| [a-z]+ | all words |
| [a\-z]+ | all successions of characters a, z, - |
| dim [a-z][a-z0-9_]* as +(new +)?timer | all declarations of an object of type Timer. |
| [0-9]+( +)|[\t,;][tTfF]( +)|[\t,;][a-zA-Z]+\n | a numeric field, a boolean field, a non-empty text field then a line break, separated by spaces or a delimiter |
| [0-9]+ | a positive integer |
| [0-9][0-9]?/[0-9][0-9]?/(19)|(20)[0-9][0-9] | a date |
| [\+\-]?[0-9]+(\.[0-9]*)?([eE][\+\-]?[0-9]+)? | a number in scientific notation |
| [0-9a-z_]+(\.|-[0-9a-z_]+)*@[0-9a-z_]+(\.|-[0-9a-z_]+)+ | an email address |