Defining vague matchers in Regex

In this topic, we will cover character classes that tell the Regex to match a single vague character. Among the vague matches, there can be a character, digit, or an alphanumeric character.

Matching a wild card character

Let's say we wanted to find a sequence where we have 1, and then any other character followed by 3, so that it would include 123, 1b3, 1 3, 133, and so on. For these types of situations, we need to use a vague matcher in our patterns.

In the preceding example, we want to be able to use the broadest matcher possible; we can choose to put no constraints on it if we wish to and it can include any character. For these kind of situations, we have the . matcher.

A period in Regex will match any character except a new line, so it can include letters, numbers, symbols, and so on. To test this out, let's implement the aforementioned example in our HTML utility. In the text field, let's enter a few combinations to test the pattern against 123 1b3 1 3 133...