^ (caret)

Match at the beginning of a string.

In "abc" ^a matches the "a," but ^b finds no match.

^(?!root)

Match everything except "root"

In a Morph Type column, use this to exclude roots. Use syntax in any column, replacing 'root' with appropriate word or characters.
^(?!.*noun.*) with wild cards (*) excludes any item the contains 'noun'.

[^x]

Match any character except "x"

^[^ ]+$ matches any entry except those that have a space.

^[^x]

Match any string except strings that begin with "x"

^[^-] excludes all entries that begin with a hyphen, such as prefixes.

$ (dollar)

• Match a character at the end of a string.

• Used with capture as the replacement criteria.

• In "abc" c$ matches the "c," but b$ finds no match.

• Entering $1 in Replace with box to replace the first captured content, specifically, that found matching the expression in the first set of parenthesis ( ).

• You can have more than one set of parenthesis (example).

. (dot)

Match any single character, without regard to what that character is.

In "This is a nice island".is matches "This" and "island."

(The dot character can get you in trouble, so use sparingly and with caution! In Unicode, the dot matches any single unicode point, but á is actually two characters.)

| (bar)

Allow alternation.

oy|ay|ey|aw to find any occurrence of diphthongs oy, ay, ey, or aw.

* (asterisk)

Match 0 or more times, as many as possible.

".*" match any number of characters as many times as possible.

+ (plus)

Match 1 or more times, as many as possible.

? (question mark)

Match zero or one time, preferably one, or make the preceding item optional.

colou?r will match both "color" and "colour."

\ (slash)

Quote the following character to make the character literal.

Characters that must be quoted to be treated as literals are * ? + [ ( ) { } ^ $ | \ . /

Use \. to find a period, or \? find a question mark.

{n}

Match exactly n times.

[pattern]

Match any one character from the set in brackets.

c[aeiou]t matches cat, cet, cit, cot, and cut.

\b

Perform "whole words only" search, as \bword\b.

• Use \bthe\b to find the word "the" in definitions or glosses.

• In "This is a nice island." \bis\b matches only the "is" but not "This" and "island."

\B

Match every position where \b does not.

In "This is a nice island." \Bis matches only the "is" in "This," and is\B matches only the "is" in "island."

\d

Match any digit from 0 to 9 and more (see metacharacters table).

In "1.2" \d matches both the 1 and the 2.

(In Find/Replace, both may be replaced.)

\d{0,1}$

Ignore homographs numbers.

When you sort and filter on letters at the end of headwords, \d{0,1}$ helps make sure that the possible presence of a homograph number does not affect the results. Type the letters you want to find ahead of the slash.

Tip: Lexeme form columns do not display the homograph numbers.

\N{unicode character name}

Match named character. (See "Tip" below.)

• \N{Hyphen-Minus} matches a single Unicode code point that has the name "Hyphen-Minus."

• \N{Em Dash} matches a single Unicode code point that has the name "Em Dash."

\p{unicode property name}

Match any character with a specified unicode property.

• \p{L} or \p{Letter} matches a single Unicode code point that has the property "letter."

• \p{Pd} (Punctuation dash) matches a single dash.

• \p{Po} (Punctuation other) matches punctuation not a dash, bracket, quote or connector.

• \p{N} or \p{Number} matches numbers.

\P{unicode property name}

Match any character without a specified unicode property.

• \P{M} matches a code point that is not a combining mark.

• \P{N} or \P{Number} matches item that are not numbers.

\s

Match a "whitespace character."

• Use "black\sboard" as the find string and "blackboard" as the replace criteria.

• Use \s to find a space in a gloss you want to replace with a period.

\w

Match word characters, as compared to non-word characters such as spaces.

\w matches very letter and digit in the string, except spaces.

\W

Match non-word characters, such as spaces.

\W matches the spaces in the string. Use to replace spaces with a period in a gloss.